The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1877-04-12
A New Star.

0ANO& AAcS uAAo PHfOA was WAAtVCuS uO"
star has appeared in the constellation Cyg-
nus (the SWAMI On the evening of Nov.
Gath, Prof. Schmidt, Director of the
Athens Observatory, noticed there star
of the third magnitude. Not only was no
star of that brightness there before, or any
star visible to the naked eye, but it was
found, when catalogues and charts came
to be examined, that no star had ever been
noted there, even in lists meant to include
all stars down to the tenth magnitude.
For instance, Highlander has made such
list, and charts from it, showing no less
than 324 900 stars-that is, q hundred
times as many as we can see ON the dark.
est and clearest night; yet his list showed
no star where the new one had appeared.
Astronomers, however, do not suppose the
new star is really new, except in the sense
of being seen for the first time. They
know that when last new star appeared
in this way, it was found to be one of Ar
gelander's army of 1000 stars, and
watching that star (which had appeared
in the constellation of the Northern Crown
in May, 1896, they found that though it
faded gradually out of sight to ordinary
vision, the telescope could still follow it,
until it had sunk to the tenth magnitude,
at which degree of luster it remained and
still remains. NO doubt if we had had
full lists of all stars down ia. the fifteenth,
or perhaps the twentieth, magnitude, we
should have found that the new star in
Cygnus was simply an old faint star which
had frightened up suddenly, and remained
for time as one among the stars adorn-
ing our skies.
Examined with an instrument called the
or~o Tho otO
strange account of itself. 1t was found to
stars; but, beside that light, 1t emitted
vapors. Among the vapors in that star
hydrogen, the vapors of the metals sodium
present in enormous quantities in our
times of total eclipse. All these vapors
surround our sun; and it is very probable
that if anything caused our sun to blaze
out with greatly increased light and heat,
folks living ON q world circling round
some other sun would find the same
peculiarities in our suns light as we have
found in the light of the new star in the
Swan. What caused that star to blaze out
IL ulot ot1 0uSO ways We w uOC hAOW. W 2
should like to know, because we might
then determine whether the cause which
had SO disturbed that sun might not be one
from which our sun may one day suffer.
Whatever the cause was, its effect did not
last very long. In week the new star sunk
to the fifth magnitude, in another week to
the sixth, in yet another to the seventh
since which time dec. 15th) it has very
slowly diminished, and is still (Jan. 5th)
above the eighth magnitude. But although
the unusual light and heat of that remote
sun faded thus quickly away, yet if in
habited worlds circled around that sun,
the cooling of their sun must have come
far too late to save those creatures lives.
flour sun were to shine even but for twenty.
four hours with several hundred times Its
usual heat, it is certain that every Great.
ure on the earth would be destroyed, and
when the sun returned to its usual lustel
it would shine on . system of worlds or
which not q single living creature wa.
left.-Prcf. r. A. Proctor, in St. Nichola'
for April.