Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1909-11-07

IT will come as surprise to most people that
i the Big Dipper is going to pieces. Astron-
omerS are now perfectly sure that the seven
stars in the group Familiarity termed the Great
Dipper are slowly but surely drifting apart.
The breaking up of this partnership was first
detected by the writer's father in 1869, while
he was at work on two maps of all the northern
and southern stars whose motions have been
ascertained. To each star in the maps he at
tached little arrow indicating the direction of
its motion, and he found that while five of the
stars in the Great Dipper were drifting in one
direction, two of them were going the opposite
way. Consequently, hundred thousand years
hence, the Great Dipper will have altered IN
appearance and no longer justify its name.
The handle of the Dipper will be bent almost
double and the Dipper, with one end flattened
out level with the bottom will show its utter
lack of utility as compared with Upper IN
good condition.
If there are inhabitants on our planet at that
remote period, they will wonder when turning
over the leaves of star atlas of the present
time why these seven stars were termed the
Great Dipper, just as we wonder now why the
constellation Ursa Major. of which the Great
Dipper forms only small part, was termed in
ancient times the Great Bear 1t does indeed
require stretch of the imagination to see an
outline of bear in those stars as they appear
to us now
Stars Not Stationary
THAT the stars are slowly shifting their po-
sitions in the sky we infer from their light
waves. The light from star travels across the
ether that fills space in tiny waves, ten to a
hundred thousand being packed within an inch.
These waveets travel at rate that would en-
circle the earth seven times IN second. Each
wave has crest like the ocean wave, and the
length of the wave is measured by the distance
between the Crests. 1t has been found that
when a star IS moving in direction the
waves of light are shorter than when it is NOV
ing from us
By this method the observations made by
my father in 1869 have recently been confirmed
by DR. Ludendorff, who gives the following in
teresting facts as a result of his work He finds
that five of the stars of the Great Dpper form
a system. placed at distance of about one
hundred light wears from us. each star moving
at the rate of twenty miles a second Since
light year IS measured by the rate at which
light travels Zone hundred and eighty-six thou
sand three hundred and thirty miles secOnd),
multiplying this by the thirty-one and half
million seconds IN a year and the result by
one hundred, we gam some FAINT idea OF the
enormous distance of these stars from our
planet. Added to this each of the five stars
is separated from the Others by distance
equivalent to thirty light years. Yet they
are drifting onward one family. though
drawn together by some irresistible power of
attraction
The truant stars Alpha and Eta, the
contrary, form another system at essentially
the same distance, but, comparatively speak
ing, almost at rest IN space. These are the
known facts of the case. regarding the drift of
the seven stars in the Great Dipper, after due
allowance is made for the motion of our own
sun; for by the same methods that have shown
that the stars drifting. we have learned
that the sun shares in the general motion.