The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-03-21
SIRIUS DAZZLING SPLEND0R.
THE GREAT DOG STAR WING WITH
VENUS AND JUPITER.

| full World That In 1,OOOOOO Mics
Further Away From the Earth
Than the Earth Is From the sun.
The star Gradually Changing in
COI0r-The Part 1t Plays in super
stition-Its influence on Religion.
II the reader will turn his eyes towards
the south soon after dark, he VIII see,
| high up in heavens, a dazzling star of the
| first magnitude about whose strange his
tory there cings more Of scientific inter-
| est, mystery and romance than any OF
| the shining host Of night. This is Sirius,
or the Great Dog Star, whose size and
| splendor has challenged the admi
ration and wonder of mankind through all
the ages 1t is by far the largest of the
| fixed stars, vying even with Venus and
| Jupiter. which now adorn the western and
eastern skies. Its light is now
dazzlingly white, though it is
| described by the ancients as
refunded. Sirius means scorehing. What
| has brought about this change Of color is
not known but it is quite probable that
it is due in some way to an increased
intensity in its heat, whereby all the rays
Of the spectrum are now emitted.
The light thrown off by this gigantic
sun has been variously estimated at from
fifty TO 500 times that radiated by our
own sun.
Sirius is one of the few fixed stars
whose parallax has been measured, and
hence its distance from us may be APP
| proximated. Owing, however, to it's vast
distance the most refined Instruments and
methods give parallax of only about one
fifth of a second of arc, representing a
! distance Of about 100000 times that of
our own sun from us. This distance is
utterly incomprehensible to the human
mind, and we may express the idea better
perhaps, by saying that it requires light,
travelling 10000 miles per second, seven
teen years to span the gulf between us
and Sirius.
More than fifty years ago very accurate
observations of Sirius showed that it was
subject to very slight periodic displace-
ment in the sky--a kind of swinging to
and fro which was very puzZling to as
tronomers. The illustrious German as
tronomer Bessel attacked the strange
problem with all the power of his pro-
found mathematical analysis, and he soon
made the announcement that Sirius had
a companion revolving around it once
every fifty years, whose gravitational
pull was the secret of the minute oscilla-
tions in the great star itself. BY the far
reaching power of his analysis he compu-
ted the period and the orbit of this UNI
seen body, but as yet no telescope of suffi-
Gent power had been constructed which
would enable him to verify his calcula-
lions. Many years later. in 1862 Avian
Clark & Sons, the distinguished Ameri-
can telescope makers, were testing the
new object glass of the Chicago telescope,
then the largest I'm the world when the
keen eye of Alvan Clark. Jr., caught the
faint star struggling in the dazzling light
of Sirius and almost in apparent con-
tact with It, and in exactly the position
indicated by the calculations for ii made
years before. Notwithstanding it's appar
ent proximity 1t is still a huge sun nearly
as large as our own revolving around
Sirius at distance twenty-three as great
as that of the earth from the sun. Here
then are two suns revolving around their
| common center of gravity and each pos
| sibly attended by retinue of worlds like
our own peopled it may be by intelligent
beings like ourselves.
The spectroscope, that marvel of mod
orn scientific research, shows that Sirius
Is composed of about the same chemical
substances as our own sun and that its
physical constitution is similar as well.
The spectroscope also reveals another
curious fact, and that is that Sirius is re-
cedng from us at the rate Of about TWEEN
ty-two miles per second, or, rather, the
distance between us and Sirius is in
creasing at that rate, for 1t must be re-
membered that our sun, together with all
its attendant planets, is drifting through
space almost In the opposite direction from
| Sirius at the rate of about sixteen miles
per second. When we consider that it
| takes a cannon ball three seconds TO go
] q n q We
| locity of this star drift may be formed.
| And yet Sirius is by no means the swiftest
star. The star Arcturus, in the constella-
| tion Bootes, is moving nearly three times
| as fast, and its motion is nearly directly
| towards us One would naturally think
that this rapid change in distance would
| soon make a sensible change in the ap-
| parent brightness of these stars as they
| approach or recede from us, but their dis
| lance is so great that the change in their
actual positions in a thousand years, enor-
nous as it is i'll fact, is but an insignifi-
cant fraction of the distance across that
vast abyss of space which separates us
from the fixed tars.
But one of the most curious and inter-
| esting things connected with Sirius is the
part it has played in the religious thought
of the world, even from the remotest ages.
| No other star has been so deified dreaded
and adored as this, and even to this dav a
| lingering trace of this old superstition re-
mains in the minds of many. Who has not
heard of the dog days" of summer with
their train of evils? Dog days" comprise
period of about forty days from the lat
! ter part of July till the early part of Sep
] TENDER, when Sirius. or the Dog Star, rises
and sets with the sun.
In Egypt, more than in any other coun-
try, do we find this star strangely con-
nected with the mysterious religion of
that ancient people. All along the valley
of the Nile temples were built and dedi-
Gated to this star. Indeed, 1t is well
known that Sirius was personihed by the
great Egyptian god Isis, and that IL was
worshiped as such. The Egyptians were
not only sun-worshipers. but star-wor.
Slippers as well, for the stars heralded the
coming OF the great god of day, whose
light and life most naturally commanded
the alteration of an ignorant land barba-
rous people rising by slow degrees TO a
higher civilization. The chief reason
which made Sirius of especial Importance
to the Egyptians aside from its great
brillancy and beauty. was the fact that
It rose with the sun about the time of the
summer solstice, or June q, which was
the beginning OF their New Year. This
was "A most innOrtant ovapt x,vtth -.