The daily Alaskan., 1915-01-14
STARRY WONDERS
The Changing, Drifting, Crum-
 hIing Consultations.
NOT so PLACID AS THEY SEEM

| iFG 1U [ LRCiD RS ms OELHl They Are All In a WhirIIog. Restless Rush, Preparing to Assemble In 9th
 CT Formatjons-Wid FIignt Earth. ] ward of the Andromeda NehuIa
 Tint srertacle." said friend of mine one night, pointing up to the starry sky. always overwhelms me w.th n sense of unchangcableness."
 Yet" replied, "lt Is the grandest tyTr or continual and stupendOus change that the imagination could pos sjbIy conceive Its apparent unchange- ablrncsS Is that of q distant landscape Seen by a Hash of lightning, the wheel ! nf q racing auto seems to he motion 1 ,css Your whole lifetime Is but a lightning flash against the spinning wheels of the universe. The entire crStory of the world since the trad! 1 rioual time of Adam is but a lightning l aash in the existence of the sidereal systems.
 They are all in motion, and they are all changing within themselves. Look wonder at that rich part of the Milky way. where the millions of apparent, ly crowded stars resemble luminous clouds. If you could stand watching those star clouds for a million years instead of a few moments they would shift and roll before your eyes like the whirIiug vaPOrs of an advancing thun, ! derstorm.
 The astronomer arrives at a knowl edge of the fluctuations of the universe by projecting his imagination back into the p1st and forward into the future l He gnzes through Q telescope which Denctrates time instead of space, It's lenses gather together and bend to a focus beams of ages instead of rays of light. With its aid he sweeps all past and coming aeons into the field of hls mental vision and strives to view them ! in the mass, as they are seen by the ancient of days himself.
 1t is in this way that we know that all these brilliant consultations. which ! to the eye of the casual lUOkei have not altered their outlines since record, ed history began, are ill reality as mutabe and ephemeral as 50 many swarrss of snow crystals.
 "Yee. it Is no eXaggeratlOn to affirm ! that ths Armament of stars would op ] pear to an eve endowed with immortal vision us restless and Us swiftly Vari. able aS u winter storm sky flied with eddyiuI flakes.
 "Jrsa Major. the Great Bear. Leo 1 the i.inn. Taurus the charging Bull Orion tac mighty Hunter, the southern Cruss the Northern Grown tm Tyre the Whalr rhc Scorpion the S"aIes Virgo thr Virgin. Hercules th" nuer Of Deeds Draro the Great Dra"on, ONhi uruaS the serpent Bearer. the whole rrl.,-rnt cycle ut the zodiac from ArUi runud tu Pisces all these, with | uui exception. auI every starry com 1 naHy .u the whole sky lhat mankind has admired and made legends about are breakin" up. crumbiing, drifting asundcr and preparing to assemble in other formations. like the new heaven that is to shine upon the new earth of tAe Apocalypse
 Look up at Aldcbaran. the red nrsl magnitude star in the eye of Taurus. 1t is going away from you nt speed of thirty five miles per second, seventy times as fast as the swifteSt cannon ball Every successive night 1t IS 3.OOO.OOO miles farther than 1t was twenty-four hours before, and yet its distance is so great that 1t has not ap, Drecfably diminished in brightness in a thousand years.
 Then tx your eyes on a little star under the feet of Orion, which astrono' mers call Delta Leporls. It Is flying away from us at the rate of siSty-two miles per second. That means a re treat of more than 5,250,0OO miles be tween one night and the next and yet Delta Leporls does not sensibly fade Ii is like a distant steamers light-so far away to begin with that no altera. ton of its distance can produce a change in its apparent magnitude until the time elapsed begins to bear some nppreciable proportion to the space that inteTTenes.
 "If you will regard another little star in tue Whale, called Eta Cephel, you