The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-09-29

skies, both for the beginner ana the more experienced. The evenings, as a rule are delightfully."- comfortable, and the light haze which we flnd In so many parts of the country accom- panying the evenings of the hot sum- mer days has gone. And royal as- semblage of stars it is that greets us from tffe depths of the evening sky. Many of our old friends have not left us; Vega, Altair, Capella, the groups IAndromeda, Perseus and Corona ,Bor- calls shine forth with undimin1shed and p1rhaps increased beauty. We do miss Arcturus in 'Bootes from our map, but his loss is counterbalanced by the new luminaries which are rls- | ing in the eastern sky.
 The New October Stars
 Just a little northward of the east point of the horizon is rising the great constellation of Taurus the Bull. Ihe first magnitude star Aldebaran of this group is yet, perhaps a little low for most favorable observation at the time of the map but one hour later will be in a far better position. The | cluster of the Pleaides, which divides with Aldebaran the popular and sclen- tific interest, can be found a short distance further up from the horizon. Aldebaran is the eye of the Bull ana has attracted the greatest amount or attention from the very earliest times. There was a time when the rising or Aldebaran with the sun was taken to mark the beginning of spring; and later when Aries the Goat became the spring Agn, in place of Taurus, Aide baran was still the brightest star in the first of the zodiacal signs. The Astrologers looked upon this star as particularly lucky one which would bring to those under its protection wealth, honor and power.
 There are only seven stars visible to | us in the north that are brighter than Aldebaran, which is practically a standard first magnitude star, accord ingto the mathematical application of the scale of magnitude. The light of i Aldebaran shows an undoubted red dish tinge and probably indicates his great age, or development and cool ing. It takes his light nearly thirty years to. reach us, whereas the sun
 which is ninety-three million miles away sends us its light in about eight minutes. If Aldebaran ceases to exist today we will not notice the extinction flor thirty years, during which inter val we will still see him shining ur there in the heavens as brilliantly as ever In absolute magnitude, real size and brilliancy, Aldebaran is one hundred and sixty times as great as the sun.
 The Pleaides
 The example of worship of the Pleiades group can be given almost without limit to the number, but suf- flee it to say here that no star wor- ship was more widespread than this
 Every continent and every cline, from the Americas to the Malay Islands
 abounded with legends and monu.
 ments which testify to the reverence and veneration felt for these stars IT
 beauty they are unsurpassed; they form a naked eye cluster of bright
 stars for which no telescope is needed
 The brightest star of the group, Alley.
 one, a third magnitude, is a pure
 white luminary. If you should have
 good atmospheric conditions you should be able to see seven stars al eral hundred and a photograph has revealed more than two thousand.
 The Planets
 Our map can show only one plane, of great interest to the naked eye as-
 tronomer or to one using an opera glass or small telescope. Jupiter, the greatest of all the planets, finds him. self in the constellation Aries, to the east of Pices the Fishes Under fa- vorable seeing conditions one car make outf our of his moons with a good opera glass or field glass; A small cheap telescope even will show them distinctly. To the naked eye Jupiter looks much like star (we
 differentiate between the planets
 which are members of the sums fam fly, and the stellar luminaries, which are not) though, indeed, brighter than any of them, being six times as bright as Vega, which itself Is a good second to Sirius, the very brightest of all the stars. As soon, however as we turn telescope upon the two and com
 pare them we are aware of a funda.
 mental difference which the naked
 eye was far from seeing. Vega, the star, looks in the telescope very much
 as it did to the eye-just a small ir. regular spot of great brilliancy, but : of greater brilliancy and beauty thar lit appeared to the naked eye. But no increase in telescepic power vii show Vega as anything but a luminou. dot, not even the biggest and most powerful telescope man is capable o1 ] planning. The great distance pre-. cludes our ever seeing a star as any. , thing but a point of light, although the more perfect the optical eonstruc
 ton of our instrument the more de finite will this image be. We know of course that stars do occupy an ex tent of space, and if we-were neal ] enough we could see a disk like z sun, but it would take an optical de
 vice different from our present day