The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1885-04-10
FIXED STARS.
Some Interesting Facts Told by News.
paporial Astronomer.

p0pOrlAl Astronomer.
OF the 5000 fixed stars visible to the
naked eye. and the 20.00o,00O within
the range of the telescope, only twenty
are classed as stars of the first marn;-
tude, and of these fourteen are yisih.e
IN this latitude. They are Sirius, or the
Dog star, which any one can easily dis
:inguish. as it is the brightest of all the
stars in the armament, and the most
brilliant gem in the southern sky; Arc
tlirus, the bright star, and pointed to
by the last two stars in the handle of
,he Dlppcr; Rigel, the pale blue gem in
the forefoot of Orion; Cape!la, a blue
star also, seen in the northwest; Vega.
The bright green star in the northeast;
Procyne, a blue star fifteen degrees e asst
Of Orion; Betelgeuse, red star in the
shoulder of Orion; Aldebaran, a red
star in front of Orion's head; Antares,
red star in the heart of the Scorpion;
Affair, green star in the Eagle; Spica,
a blue star in the Virgin; Fowalhaut, a
white star in the Southern Fish; Pol
lux, in the Twins. seen northeast of
Orion; and Regulus, the beautiful white
star very close to the planet Jupiter,
not far east of the zenith. All these
,an be seen any clear night at nine
o'clock. except Antares, Affair, Spica
and Fowalhaut, and they also can be
seen in the hours Just before dawn. A
casual glance at the stars gives the inn
preston that they are all of the same
color, but. by comparing them one with
another. it will be found that they are
of various tints. Another curious fact
is that they change their color with the
degree of their incandescence. The
brilliant Dog star was described by the
ancients as fiery red; it gradually paled
20 white. and is now green. Capella
has changed from red to yellow. and
from yellow to pale blue; and the brill
liant new star of 1872, which suddenly
blazed forth in the constellation of Cas-
siopeia and remained visible for six
months before fading out of sight,
changed from white to yellow, and then
20 red.
The first magnitude stars are not all
of equal brightness and apparent size
Sirius is three times brighter and APP
parently larger than any other star in
the heavens, the easy chief in the Won
drous procession ever moving overhead
from east to west. The next brightest
is Campus. the steel blue gem in the
southern heavens, which the Arabs re-
gard with such deep reverence. 1t is
not visible in this latitude, but can be
sccE just above the horizon in the lati-
lude of New Orleans. Next comes
Alpha Centauri. the first of all the fixed
stars found to have an estimable par
allaX and the nearest one to our earth.
This star, together with the two bright
sst in the Southern Cross, are invisible
10 our latitude, but can be seen at Key
West. in Florida, which is the only spot
in our country from which the South
ern Cross, itself regarded by some as
the most impressive of all the constella-
tons, can be looked at.
Astronomers are overwhelmed Mt the
contemplation of the enormous dis
tances of the fixed stars from us and
from one another. The planetary inter-
walls in our solar system are insignificant
in comparison with them. One might
suppose that with base line of 1885,
100000 miles between opposite points
of our earth's orbit, we could secure a
measurable angle for computing the
distance of a star. but it is found that
the two lines drawn from a star to the
opposite ends of this line are swallowed
up in the immense stretch of space they
traverse; they make no appreciable
angle at all, but appear as one line. A
German astronomer has discovered a
method by which an approximate paral-
lax for some of the stars is obtained,
and this shows that the nearest fixed
star, Alpha, in the Centaur. is 224.000
times farther from the earth than the
sun is, and the North star 3.OOO,0O0
farther off than the suns distance.
These measurements can be expressed
only in figures; it is impossible for the
human mind to grasp them.-St. Louis