Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1881-10-12
The Winking Demon.

g L have been watching the star calleC
the Winking Demon" said the astron
omer, as he extended his hand to pull til,
reporter up ON the roof "These au
tumn mornings are little chilly, bu
the air is so deliciously pure and cleal
that one doesn't mind if it bites little
Besides, it is worth the risk of catching
cold to see the Demon wink. You arc
Just in time to watch him as he grad
ually reopens his eye. If you had CONT
few minutes earlier you might havs
seen him shut it."
"Where is this remarkable demon
star ?"
"There, almost overhead at this hour.
If you want to point him out to youl
friends you have only to observe that he
is little south of that bending row OF
stars that marks the constellation Per-
seus, and that there is little group OF
smaller stars near him. Now, You see,
his light is pretty faint, but not so faint
as it was few minutes ago. In three
or four hours his eye will be wide open
again. and he will shine as a star of the
second magnitude These winkings of
Al3ol, or the Demon, occur little Of
tener than once in three days."
"What causes them
"Ah, now you come to the strangest
thing of all. Is there anything in the
appearance of the sky, all glittering
with stars, that suggests to your mind
that it may be vast cemetery? No,
ridiculous you say. Very well. You
will not dispute that the earth we tread
is, from one point of view, only great
burying ground, which contains the re-
mains not only of countless generations
of men, but of whole races and tribes of
various animals and plants. Just so in
the heavens about us the dead are
mingled with the living. 1t is to my
mind the most suggestive discovery of
modern astronomy that the universe is
full of dead suns-suns whose light has
gone out. whose fires have been extin-
guished, and which no longer shed life
giving and life preserving rays upon the
worlds that may be imagined yet circ-
ling in coldness and gloom about them.
What has this to do with the Winking
Demon? Why, everything. 1 believe
it is generally conceded, though Prof.
Newcomb seems to dissent, that the
variations in the light of Algol are
caused by some huge dark body rsvolv-
ing around it at a frIghtful rate of speed.
There are other variable stars whose
phenomena can be accounted for in the
same way. In tbs case of Algol there
is evidence that the dark body is rapid
ly approaching the star, drawing nearer
with every circle. Wher it strikes, if it
is to strike, who can picture the extent
of that catastrophe? Then, indeed, that
mysterious dark body will become Wis
ible, blazing with the light of hundred
suns, and unable to escape from the
fiery destruction that it has brought
upon the star
"Oh, yes the great star Sirius is ac-
companied by huge body of the kind.
1t is not altogether dark, for with large
telescopes it can occasionally be seen
glimmering family close to the star
Astronoiaers knew il was there before
they got glimpse of it, for it caused
disturbances in the proper motion of the
star. Another of these dark bodies
which astronomers are sure exists, al
though no human eye ever saw it, is
dogging the star Procyon, one Of the
brightest in the sky. You may see the
star now low down in the east, north Of
Sirius and below the Twius. The in
visible body that hovers about it is eyi-
IDENTIFY of large size, for it causes con-
siderable perturbations in the stars
motion. 1t may once have been a sun
as brilliant as Procyon itself, but now
not ray comes from it. Still, astron-
omers can point ont the changes in its
position, as its attraction pulls the star
now tlns way and now that.
eff space is filed with these mysteri-
Gus dark bodies, collisions between them
and living, or light giving, suns are not
impossible. You know that our sun is
in rapid motion, carrying his family of
worlds along with him in his fight. So
all the stars are instinct with motion.
Our lives are so short and their distances
are so great that we can hardly appreci-
ate these motions, yet they are swift be-
yond comprehension. Some of the stars
are approaching, others receding, all
moving in some direction. The con-
stellations whose forms are so familiar
to us are falling to pieces like card
houses. In few thousand years there
will be no Great DippeI, no Orion with
his club, no Southern Cross. The
heavens would look like new universe
to one of us who revisited the earth in
the ten-thousandth century. Nov, #
we suppose that there are as many daSk
or dead suns as there are living ones, it
il not difficult TO believe that occasion
ally there might be collisions between
them. OF course, the chances against
any such collision would be very, very
great, and yet some of the cases of stars
that have suddenly blazsd out with as