The Valley Virginian. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1865-1895, 1881-11-24
NO.33
The Sky as a Cemetery.
From the New York Sun.

81 have been watching the star called the
Winking Demon" said the astronomer. as he
extended his hand to pull the reporter upoT
the roof. "These autumn morning are little
chilly, but the air is so delicously pure and
clear that one doesn't mind if it bites little
Besides, it is worth the risk of catching cold
to see the Demon wink. You are Just in time
to watch him as he gradually reopens his eye
If you had come few minutes earlier yorl
might have seen him shut it,"
| Where is this remarkable demon star ~
| There, almost overhead at this hour, II
you want to point him out to your friends YOU
have only to observe that he is a little south of
that bending row of stars that marks the con-
stellation Perseus, and that there is little
group of smaller stars near him Now, YOU
see, 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 Algol, or the Demon, oc-
cur little oftener 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 glttering with stars, that suggests
to your mind that it may be a vast cemetery !?
No, ridiculous! you say. Very well You
will not dispute that the earth We tread is,
from one point of view only a vast buryino
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 astron-
ony that the universe is full of dead snns-suns
whose light has gone out, whose fires have
been extinguished, and which no longer shed
life-glving and lite-preserving rays upon the
worlds that may be imagined yet circling in
GOODNESS and gloom about them What has
this to do with the WinkIng Demon WHY
everything. 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 revolving around it
at a frlghttul rate OF speed There are other
variable stars whose phenomena can be ac-
counted for in the same way In the case of
Algol there is evidence that the dark bodyis
rapidly approaching the star, drawing nearer
with every circle When it strikes, if tits to-
strike, who can picture the extent of that Ca
tastrophe? Then indeed, that mysterious dark
body will become visible, blazing With the
light of a hundred suns and unable to escapes
from the fiery destruction that it has brought
upon the star"
Are there any other dark bodies like this
known to astronomers
"Oh, yes the great star Sirius is accompa-
MED by the huge body of the kind 1t is not
altogether too dark, for with large telescopes
1t can occasionally be seen glimmering family.
close to the star. Astronomers knew it 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 as
tronomers are sure exists, although no human
eye ever saw it, is lodging 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 twins. The invisible
body that hovers about it is evidently of large
size, for 1t causes considerable 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 astronomers
can point out the changes in it's position as
its attraction pulls the star now this way and
now that
''lf space is filled with these MYSTERIOUS
lark bodies, collision between them and living
Or light giving, suns are not impossible You
know that our sun is in rapid motion, carry
ing his family OF worlds along with him in
MS flight. So all the stars are instinct with
motion. Our lives are so short and their dis
,ances are SO great that we can hardly appre-
;iate these motions, yet they are swift beyond
Some of the stars are APP
preaching, others receding, all moving in some
1rectlon. The consultations whose forms are
80 familiar to US are falling to pieces like card
houses. In a few thousand years there will
be no Grant Dipper, no Orion with his club,
40 Southern Cross. The heavens would look,
like new universe to one of us who revisited
The earth in the ten thousandth century Now
i we suppose that there are as many dark or
lead suns as there are living ones, it is not diff
lcult to believe that occasionally there might
De 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 blazed out with as
onshing brilliancy and then disappeared, may
De accounted for in this way To show you
hat there is no exaggeration in what am
saying about the multitude of dead suns in the
see what Sir John Lubbock said in
lis inaugural address at the meeting of the
3ritisb association in August last
The floor OF heaYen is not only thick in
aid with patines of bright gold but studded
llso with extinct stars, once probably as bril-
lant as our own sun, but now dead and cold
is HembJltz tells that our sun itself will be
ome 100000 years hence"
but we need not wander off in space in
search OF the sky's untombed dead We have
light at hand, circling about our own earth,
not an extinct sun, but a dead world The
noon is dead and has been dead these million
Iears. There the astronomer, if he fancies
himself the worlds surgeon, may study the
Effects OF malady that no surgery could cure
sven worlds and suns. like men and women,
ROW old and die but unlike men and wo-
men, they have no grave but the open and
,oundless heavens. S sac