Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1899-09-02

the Scorpion. In the southwest. to Perseus,
in the northeast
This remarkable. cloud-like. family lumi-
nous belt of the night sky has long per-
picked and still perplexes astronomers.
The only thing known about 1t with GER
tainty is that its luminosity is due to the
blended light of millions of telescope stars.
But are these stars suns. comparable with
our own in size? In which case they must
be at almost unthinkable distance from
in order to shine family they do. Or
may they not be comparatively small bodies
at no very great distance from US, star
distances go?
The elder Herschel adopted the former
of these two possible suggestions in ex-
PLANTATION of the Milky Way, and his view.
with various notifications. has generally
been accepted by astronomers as on the
whole the more probable of the two.
Herschel conceived that the millions OF
suns which make up the universe are ar
ranged. not in the globular form which the
sdereal heavens seem to have, but in the
form of enormous disk, our sun being
located somewhere near its center. He
regarded the Milky Way an optical eff
feet, due to the circumstance that In this
direction look into more profound
depth of stars-of suns succeeding suns IN
almost inexhaustible professionalism when
we face in direction perpendicular to H.
Studying the Milky Way.
Photography has been applied in recent
years to the study of this question of the
nature of the Milky Way. and its testimony
is not favorable to the Herscheiian theory.
on the contrary, the impression which one
cannot avoid receiving from Photographic
presentations of the Milky Way. partic-
ularly from study of the beautiful photo
graphs taken by Prof Barnard with
short-focus lens with the object of bring
ing out general features, is that 1t Is clold-
like in its character. and. moreover that it
is cloud or mass of clouds of no great
thickness. relatively to its breadth. In
other words the Milky N3y presents in
the photographs the same appearance as to
the naked eye. but brought out with
greater cearness, particularly when the
pictures are looked at from little distance
and in a proper light. These pictures have
a peculiar feecy or curded appearance
Here and there in them areas of more
than the average brightness, suggestive of
a gathering and condensation of the star
dust in these places, and here ana there
are darker portions, some of them almost
destitute of stars. spots nearly black, which
look like openings in the cloud. permitting
our vision to penetrate here through the
Milky Way to a starless region beyond.
These photographs have rendered it prac-
tically certain that Herschel entirely
wrong in his conception of the Milky Way
that it has not the profundity which he
assumed it to have. and that its stars. of
whatever magnitudes, all at essentially
the same distance from
Testimony of PHOTOGRAPHY
And now about the probable size of these
attention TO the fact that in many of the
nebulae found in the Milky Way, and
which. as there is reason to think are act
ualy in and not merely in line with the
Milky Way, there are stars that visible
to the naked eye. These stars are I'M
doubtediy in the Milky Way and are there
fore at essentially the same distance from
US as the fainter stars with which they are
associated. and which form the groundwork
of the Milky Way. There are reasons for
no hos ht.itr hi
parable with our sun in size 1t fol-
lows, If this assumption is true. that the
body of the Milky Way is made up of an
order of stars vastly inferior to the sun
How much smaller they are" SAYS Bar
nard, iii would not be safe to estimate. but
they must be hundreds, perhaps thousands,
of times smaller
This testimony of photography though
as yet hot fully Interpreted has swept
away with the disk theory of the great
Herschel the main ground upon which
have been based those unthinkable STAR
distances in the contemplation of which
some astronomers have indulged-distances
of ten. twenty, thirty thousand light
years. There is no longer any reason ia
think that the universe extends farther in
the plane of the Milky Way than in anv
othe" direction. How far it extends in any
direction Is question upon which there
is room for wide differences of opinion.
Some of our foremost astronomers are be-
ginning to hold more sober views regard
ing the extent of the visible heavens than
We're prevalent only few years ago
The Planets.
Mercury will be morning star through
out the month 1t will be at its greatest
elongation west of the sun on the 4th of
the month.
Venus will be in superior conjunction
with the sun-direcsiy behind the sun-on
the 10th. On that date it will change from
a morning to an evening star. but it will
rot be visible during the month
Mars is an evening star. in Virgo, setting
at about pm
Jupiter, also evening star, in the con-
of Libra. sets at about 9 pm.
Saturn. an evening star, is about ten de-
greeS northeast of AntareS in the lower
part of Ophiuchus and at about IL
p. NJ. Uranus near the star Beta Scorpii,
sets half hour earlier. Neptune, in Tau
rus, has become an evening star, rising
shortly before midnight.
On the 23d, at l am, Washington time,
the sun enters Libra, and autumn begins