The Washington bee., 1893-07-15
CELESTIAL PHENOMENA.
New Stars Appear and Old Ones Disap-
pear in the Realms of Space.

pear in the Realms of Space.
The fixed stars appear so unchange-
ably fixed, as If screwed on the celes-
tial vault, and the stellar expanse
wears such an appearance Of stead
fastness night after night, year after
year, and century after century, that
it sounds strange to hear that the
whole stellar universe is the scene of
continual movement, and that there is
not one shining point in it that is at
rest. And the StarS-SOme of them at
least-are not always in their places.
To say that they come and go would
be absurd. Nevertheless, new stars
do appear, and old ones disappear,
after the manner of the terrestrial OBJ
jects, and it is one of the wonders
which astronomy, with all its achieve
ments, finds no explanation of.
There are variable stars which are
constantly waxing and waning in per-
iods, increasing in brightness for GER
tain time until they reach a maximum
Of effulgence, and then dying away to
faint points to revive again and go
through the same change indefinitely.
Most of these capriciouS stars are tele-
scopic-too small for the naked eye to
observe their variations; but there is
one, called by the Arabs Algol, the
demon star, in Medusa's Head in the
circumpolar consultations, which any
one with ordinary vision can see with
out the aid of glass.
It is probably million times further
Off than our sun, and yet every three
days it is seen to go through a series
of transformations, increasing in size
from the fifth to the third magnitude
and then paling back to the fifth. An
other star, Wonderful, in the Whale,
requires nearly year to go through
it's changes from the second magni-
tude to total disappearance and back
to it's normal size; and still another,
Delta, in the constellation Cepheus,
effects it's change in five and half
days.
But these variable stars, unaccount-
able as they are, yield in point of won
der to those which seem to come into
existence and those which pass out of
existence-these as if they had run
their course and fulfilled their mission,
and those as if they were new crea-
tions from the hand of the Almighty.
The ancients, who had only their
naked eye to scan the heavens with,
counted seven brilliants in the beauti-
full trembling group of the Pleiades,
and the group is still known to us as
the Seven Stars, though one of the
seven disappeared years ago. One star
in Auriga, one in the Wolf, and sew
eral in the Southern Fish, laid down
in the ancient lists, are now no longer
seen, and the astronomers of the seven
teenth and eighteenth centuries point
out many more that have disappeared.
The history Of the famous Star of
Bethlehem" as it is called, is familiar
to many readers. It appeared sud-
denly in the constellation the Chair on
November IL, 1872, bursting into view
so abruptly and so conspicuously as to
I'LL with amaZement the Danish astrOn-
omer, Tycho Brahe, who had examined
the heavens an hour before without
seeing it. This star remained in the
sky for eighteen months, shining for
part of that time with brilliancy
greater than even the brightest of the
planets, and then vanished never to
return.
Many persons who saw and admired
1t lived to see another similar stellar
apparition burst into view in the Ser
pent on October 10, 1904 It increased
in brightness until it was as brilliant
as the planet Jupiter, and inferior only
TO venus, and then waned slowly to
total disappearance in 1906. AS late
as tWenty-six years ago, in 1886,
new star blazed out in the Northern
Crown where no star had been seen
before, and grew to second magni-
tude size, and then vanished.
These three new stars excited popu-
lar as well as scientific interest by
their conspicuous brilliancy, but it is
probable that similar apparitions take
place frequently in remote regions. if
we only had eyes to see them. The
stellar system is so inconceivably dis
tant from the frontier Of our own solar
system that when all our knowledge
Of the stars is grouped together it
amounts to almost nothing, and as
tronomers are as ignorant Of the cause
OF these phenomena as the masses of
men.
They look upon them in HELPLESS
amazement and awe, since the most
powerful telescopes fail to extort an
explanation Of them from the serene
and silent depths Of space. As proba-
Die an explanation as any other is
that they are bodies larger than our
sun in confiagration. Their hour of
doom has struck, and they flame I'D
and burn to cinders and ashes, to be
seen no more.-St. Louis Republic.