The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-12-01

The December sky brings to our
 notice several new objects of great 1 interest Saturn, the planet, is now high enough to be observed in the
 early evening hours. Among the stars we have as welcome newcomers Sirius and Procyon, making up to nss the loss of Vega and Altair, which Is soon to follow, though both are as yet visible low. down on the western hori- zon. Jupiter, of course, still shines p1acid1y and is readily identified by help of map. Sirius, the Dog Star, may perhaps
 be termed the very monarch of star | dom, for he is the brightest of all the
 stars, riva1lings in brilliancy the large planets themselves. In scientific terms his magnitude is minus 1s, and magnitudes are numbered so that the order of magnitude increases with decreasing bril1iancy., Only eight light years separate us from Sirius, making him one of the nearest of the fixed stars. The light year is an astronomic unit of distance equal Ito the number of miles that light, which travels at the rate of 1S6,OOO miles per second, will pass over in a year.
 This determination of his distance shows us that other of our bright stars are really in themselves of
 greater light giving power than Sirius, which appears the most brilliant to us, but owing ito their greater dis tance, seems fainter. And Sirius is AS times as great an energy produced as our sun!
 Astronomers attempt to tell the age of a. star from it's color. Assuming that the maximum of energy is pro-
 duced at the time of the stars forma-
 ton, say, through the collision of two I1o
 gradual cooling which must come
 through the loss of heat and light by
 radiation will with the passing-ages
 change the nature or color Of the
 stars light. The youngest ands there7
 fore, hottest will gIeam blue or rather,
 bluish-white; those next in age yell
 Jewish and those that arc old and
 conn nparative1y cold will be of a red
 dish hue. Compare the color of heat
 ed iron as the temperature mounts. In
 this temperature age scale our sun
 finds a place in the middle group of yellowish stars, whereas Sirius is one
 of the younger, bluish stars.
 Sirius has a comparatively dark ,companion, whose mass is only one half as great as that of Sirius, and the light emitted by the darker body~is to that of Sirius himself as one is. to 4O,O0O. The companion star was ac@ tually seen in a telescope in 1862 and had been predicted from the slight periodic variations of Sirius some time before that.
 The Dog Star played an important role in many of the ancient pagan religions, and many fuRctions, both l benevolent and baIeful, were assigned to him. The ancient Egyptians rever- enced him because the morning rising. 1 heliacaI rising, Astronomers call it., of this star was the sure forerunner of | the inundation of the Nile valley. The name of the Dog Star was very likely l applied to it because of the prevalence of rabies at the time that Sirius shone in the daytime with the sun, though naturally Sirius has nothing to do with this.
 Saturn.
 Saturn is the second largest planetIl of our solar system, only Jupiter e7l- ceeding him in size, and his orbit lies just outside that of the latter. The tune, are modern discoveries, and Saturn was the outermost planet known to the ancients who observed and studied his motions. Saturn -ex- ceeds in interest and beauty his largerti and smaller rivals because of the rings which he alone of all the planets pos sesses. It requires a small telescope to see them, and the picture revealed to our view is unsurpassed in the heavens. You see a great gleamfng round ball surrounded by a bright ring of elliptic, shape. The rings are really circular, or very nearly so, but you are looking at them more or less edgewise. On a good night you will soon make out the dark space bel tween the sphere and the rings, where you are looking through to the sky beyond. You should also see a dark line on the bright surface of the ring; | this is the dividing line between the two outer rings, which at first appear to constitute only one. Within these rings there is still a third ring, called the gauge ring, which is not visible in small telescopes at all because. of | it's transparency and extreme attenu- ation., <
 The rings were first seen by Calico in 161O, but he did not recognize them as such He thought that they were planet and so could not explain or understand them. Huygens in 1855 recognized their nature, and the inn provement of the telescope soon led to the confirmation of his observation by others and further to the discov- cry of the double nature of the ring. The third ring was not discovered un- til 1850. About the latter date the composition of the rings came in for and it was shown mathe- maticaIIy that solid rings could not exist there; neither could liquid, and the only possible condition was that the rings were composed of particles, large and small, revolving separately about their father Saturn This was actually proven to be the case by the spectroscope, which showed that the inside of the rings travelled at a greater speed than the outside, which , prec1udesi the possibility of a solid, rigid ring : of Saturn and His Orbit.
 The mean distance Nof Saturn from