The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-06-01

! mensely distant and separately indis-
| tnguishi.ble stars. This diffuse steady
light is sometimes called the Floor of
| the Heavens.
or the brightest stars, the brilliant
| blush Spica and the golden Arcturils
| are now the most prominently placed
in the heavens, for they both shine
| cut almost exactly in the south. The
| great hery-red sun, Antares which is
| far more advanced in its development
lhan our own sum- is appearing in the
| southeast, while farther toward the
north the very bright, blue Vega and the
| fainter Altar are seen we'll up from
| the ground in the evening sky The
| possessor of a small telescope should
not fail to examine the beautiful double
star of contrasting colors al A tFigure
/ y, nor the well known compact star
/ cluster at B. He may remember how
! last winter remarkable variable star
| was easily visible in the upright of the
/ Northern Cross in the position c. and
/ he will notice that this has now an
parently disappeared. This sun is ran
| idly growing fainter and will soon he of
| the 1875 magnitude and only visible in
| the largest telescopes Its wonderful
| Frightening occurs at nearly constant
| interval of 406 days, though in recent
Years this period has been SLOWLY
| lengthening-a fact as inexpiicable to
10 as tHe cause Oh the extraordinary
! Frightening itself. Around the star d
there will be seen in the telescope a
wonderful stream of stars, while at lG
Will be found the strange DumbbeIl
| Nebula, which latter, however is some
what too faint to be satisfactorily OBJ
served with a very small telescope.
Dimensions of Stellar Universe
OF late there have been many articles
| in the various astronomical journals
/ dealing with the true structure and
extent of our Milky Way cluster. of tha
| significance of the wonderful streaming
of many of its stars, and of the abso-
lutte Velocities with which these stars
| are moving through space. The diff
Guilty of the whole matter lies In the
| TACT that these stars are so far away
| from us that they suffer no displace-
| ments of their apparent positions on
| the Sky as our earth passes around the
sun and hence 1t is not possible for us
to measure directly their absolute dis
tances from us in miles. When great
numbers are considered. together, how
| ever, their average distances may be
approximated to by several different
processes and the results are usually
accordant.
| 1t is exceeding probable that the
| stars of the nearer, brighter part of
| the Milky Way are on the average so
| far from us that their light occupies
| about 1000 years in passing from them
| to our sun, while the principal outer
boundary is about twice as far distant,
and possibly somewhat more Thus we
believe that the dimensions of the Milky
! Way cluster do not exceed a few thou
| sand light years.
| 1t was the belief of Herschel that
| these dimensions ought rather to be
stated as some millions of light years,
and this view has recently been again
| advanced by some astronomers: its eX
treme improba bility can, however, be
shown in a very simple manner For
a brief calculation shows us that were
our sun removed to distance of 2,000,-
| 600 light years it would appear to us "A S
| a star of the twenty-ninth magnitude,
| only; far too faint to be seen in any
| telescope and even beyond the power of
detection by photography Now each
/ one of the mass of ninth magnitude
stars of the Milky Way are on the
whole in nearly the same condition a S
| our sun, and If this is so. the assump-
| ton of such immense distances re-
quires us to suppose that these stars are
! millions of millions of times as great
/ as our sun. While it is true that many
stars are much larger than our sun,
and that some of them are even hun
| dreds of times as large, we have no
| indications of the existence of any hot
bodies whose dimensions even approach
| this order of ma gnitude Indeed, 1t
| seems uncertain whether such an in
| conceivably great mass of matter could
| exist a single body. From this con-
| sideration alone 1t therefore appears
| that the smaller dimensions of the
Milky Way are more likely to be the
true ones.
The Planets in June
/ Toward the beginning of the month
no planet is visible in the early evening,
but the beautiful Jupiter is even then
very near the borders of our evening
sky. and by June 80 it will become "A
conspicuous object in the southeast.
| This planet rises at about 10 p. m.
on June /, at about p. m. on June }
and at about sunset by the end of the
month. There is no more interesting
world for study in a small telescope
than this. Its beautifully banded and
swiftly turning ball and its four bright
moons, whose relative positions are con-
stantly changing, furnish an object TO
which the observer turns with pleasure,
a gain and again, the hours of the
night go by.
Venus and Mars now shine out
brightly in the east in the early morn
ing, the former planet about 80 minutes
to the left and above the latter, Their
relative position changes but little dur
ing the month. Venus thus remains
the conspicuous morning star, though
it does not reach its greatest distance
of three hours west from the sun until
July 8.
Mercury, Saturn and Uranus are now
all morning stars, but throughout the
month they will remain too near the
sun to be satisfactorily observed
on June 21 at hours minutes
D. m. eastern standard time), the sun
will reach its highest position above the
equator of the heavens this will there
fore be the longest day of the year.