The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-09-01

and will therefore be seen to diminish very noticeably in brightness as the weeks go on. though 1t will still be brighter than any of the fixed stars.
 In the southeast Is the beautiful planet Saturn. which will remain in the evening sky until next February. In the early part of September the rings will be bare- ly visible in small telescope as mar row line, as the earth carries us around the sun we will finally on October ? be In such a position that we will view them exactly edgewise. After this We will be carried above the plane of the rings. bat the sun will continue to shin con them from below. As they shine only by re- fleeted sunlight and are therefore only visible when lit up by the sun, and as after October we will be looking only at the dark uniluminated side of them, they will then be invisible to Us and re- main so throughout the rest of the year.
 The Planet Mars.
 The observer who now examines Mars with a moderately large telescope will see a very large, brilliantly white area sur rounding the south pole of the planet and a smaller one around the north pole. AL most the whole southern hemisphere is of a grayish green color, although there are here and there orange-colored patches Tn the green region. The north half of the planet is almost wholly of an orange color. At first this is about all that the observer will notce but if he will look steadily for some time and take advant- age of moments of good seeing he will be- come convinced that the greenish and orange areas have perfectly definite oat- lines and he may even be able to trace out some of the larger divisions of these regions from the map in Fig ?. AS Mars turns on it's axis once in every twenty four hours it cannot be told which face of the planet will be presented toward him. The so-called Hour Glass Sea at A, Fig. 9 is the most prominent marking and may be detected even with quite small telescope.
 It was formerly supposed that the greenish areas are bodies of water. This partly because they show a great variety in their tint and depth of color In their different portions. which is not a char acteristic of vast bodies of water, unless these can be imagined to be exceedingly shallow, and partly because the sunlight reflected from these greenish regions shows no trace of polarization. Water. indeed seems to be of very rare occur renee on the planet; It's only decided ln- dlcation Is seen as a dark band which borders the polar cap when this begins to melt. As the Martian summer ad- vances and the polar cap grows smaller the band recedes with 1t. Thirteen years ago the cap entirely melted away: the band then became quite thin and finally completely disappeared, leaving only d yellow surface.
 If the polar caps are really snow or ice the temperature on Mars must be higher than on the earth since the earths ice caps never entirely melt. If this is SO the planet must have some source of in- ternal heat, for it receives somewhat less than one-half the light and heat from the sun that we do. It is much smaller than the earth only 400 miles in diameter. and it's skies are always very clear. As the astronomer studies Mars no clouds drift, over the planet to shut its delicate markings from his view, though occa- sionally at rare intervals such clouds are said to have been seen. The air on Mars is believed to be less than one-fourtn as dense as our own. The whole surface is much flatter than that of our earth; there are no large hills or mountain ranges. but there Is some evidence that the greenlsh areas are slight depressions. possibly the beds of old seas from which the water has all disappeared
 Thirty years ago announcement was made of the discovery of the remarkab ble canals. perfectly straight, dark lines ex- tending over the orange colored regions in every direction. but each one always connecting at its extremity either With a greenish area or with another canal. It is said that these lines commonly start from well-marked bays in the greenisn areas frequently several which extend for hundreds of miles come together at common center, which is marked by