The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-11-01

i
 l Jupiter. the giant planet of the I the evening sky throughout the month and in the absence of the moon foutshtnes every other celestial body. But a strong competitor in brightness andN interest is now claim ing a share of our attention and with increasing force throughout the win i ter months. The planet Saturn-the ringed p1anet-iss on the horizon at about g o'clock in the early days of the month and is rapidly climbing into position of greater prominence. In November you will find him the meridian in the early morning, but even before midnight you will easily recognize his steady brilliance Howard the Northeast in the constella- ton Gennini.
 The Cancellations.
 Auriga, with the first magnitude star CapeIla, is now well above the horizon by g o'clock, as is also the constellation of the Bull, Taurus, con taintng three things of interest: The first magnitude star Aldebaran. the 1 beautiful star group of the .Pleidades and the lesser group of Hyades. Com ing rapidly over the horizon in the Northeast is Genhini. the Twins. This group contains the famous Castor and Pollux, than which no stellar objects have excited more interest and an cfent religious veneration, They were the sailors lucky stars and also the warriors; they were the guardians of scented to the Greeks the day, the other the night Reference to this 1 pair in mythology and history can be multiplied without number, and their scientific interest docs not lag far lbehind. Many years ago, when the
 
 the scheme was to call the brightest lastar of any constellation alpha" of that constellation, the next brightest 'sbeta.' the next gamma and so lon. using the letters of the Greek i salphAbet. So it happened that in this group of the Twins the star we call Castor, being the brightest, was called alpha Genini'' and the star tPollux s'beta Ge1r1ini.'' But today Ithis is no longer the case-Po1lux is brighter than Castor! It must be. then, that even within the memory of man these stars have changed fn rela- tive brightness, showing that the so- called fixed stars are not immutab1e, but, as everything else in this our uni- verse, evolute and change. And this remarkable change has taken place within no more than 300 years.
 The Giant Hunter Orion is rising above the horizon at about the time of I stars, Betelgeuze and Rigel, should soon be visible to one who has a fairly unobstructed horizon. Both these are first Tnagnitudes, and the constellation contains also four sec i onds. which make it one of the most prominent of all the groups. Bete1- geuze marks the Hunters right shoulder Rige1 his left foot, and the three bright stars close together and fin an almost perfect straight line con- kstitute the Belt of Orion. This latter group and the Great Dipper in Ursa Major occupy the greatest share Of [ the popular fancy.
 I FThiS constellation contains also ifwFat is considered by many to be ithe finest objects for small telescopes in all the heavens-the Great Nebula in Orion. No part of it is at all vfsi- I b1e to the naked eye, neither the hay film of the nebu1a itself nor the small group of four stars called the Trape- ziunn, which appears to be right in the nebu1a and probably has some sys- temic connection with it. Unquestion- ably we have, here solar system | in embryonic state, and it may well Hbe that even before our sun and earth die their certain cosnfc death this mass of swir1ing matter in Orion will take on the definite composition Eof one or more central suns and number of planets revolving about them.
 The North Star.
 How to find the North Star is prob ably the very first 'tastDonomic'' 1 problem the 1ayman sees himself to solve, and it is one easily done by the use of the Pointer stars of the Great Dipper. If you have not already made the acquaintance of this group I you can easily do so by reference to the map, which shows it to be squarely in the North. quite low down | on the horizon. with the bowl of the Dipper turned so that it will hold water, as the sailors say. The two stars of the bowl which form it's out line farthest away from the handle are the Pointer or index stars. Pro- Hong an imaginary line connecting them about four times it's length from the bowl outward, and the line will almost hit a. second magnitude star which has no bright stars at all in the immediate vicinity. That is the Pole Star, or Polaris, and it is only two and one-half degrees away from the true North Pole itself. Polaris | is various1y estimated to be from 35 l to 63 Iight-years away from us and ! is probably of about the same in trim sic magnitude as our own sun. It is Ireceding from the solar system at the Irate of about 6 miles per second. It