The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-06-01

The warm evenings of June prove an irresistible incentive to the study of the heavens and certainly the sights presented to us by the sky at this time of She year will repay the seeker after the Beauties and TO- mances of astronomy. It is our pur- pose this month to show how by means of the star chart the initiated can identify the cancellations and individual stars and thus realize some of the wonders of science and make the stars mean more to him than just points of IigIlt.f
 The heavenly bodies in general may be divided into two groups for the purpose of this elementary exposi- ton: Those that belong to the solar system and those that do not The former class contains the Sun itself. the Moon, the planets-Mercury ye- nus. Earth. Mars, the planetoids. Jul piter, Saturn. Uranus and Neptune All the other heavenly lights are ex- traneous to the system though origin ally from outside and certainly pass Through the boundaries of the sun,s domain.
 Immediately distin guish hing the stars from the solar family aem bers is the fact that the stars do not change their apparent position in the heavens as regards one another. They rise and set but do not change the configuration in which we find them; for that reason the ancients< called them the fixed stars in contra a-distinc- tion to the planets, or wanderers Of course we know now that slight changes in their positions do occur, but these changes will not change their aspect to the naked eye for many thousands of years. We are able therefore to make charts of the fixed stars which will be good for a1- ways. We can also make a globe and put upon it the stars in their nat ura1 places and thus get true rep resentation of the heaven of stars. But never will such a map or globe repre- sent the sky as it actually appears to the observer, particularly the inexper- fenced amateur, because. interspersed among the stars themselves, are the planets, and since they appear to the naked eye just like any of the bright stars, they may badly confuse him. On the accompanying map the visible planets have been plotted out and may readily be recognized and con- fusion with the stars avoided.
 Use of the Star Map.
 The best constellation to start with is probably the Great Dipper in the constellation Urea Major. the Great Bear. Turn to the north and pretty well up from the horizon you will find these seven stars in the formation shown on the chart, the handle of the Dfpper pointing toward and very near the zenith. l.. e., the point directly overhead This group, once recog- nized, will not be forgotten, no mat ter what position the rotation puts the Dipper into There are no other bright stars in the immediate neigh borhood. The two stars with the arrow drawn through them on the chart. forming the outer rim of the D1pper, are called the North Pole Pointers, because they point to Po- 1aris, the Pole Star. the star nearest the position of the celestial North Pole. This is a part of the group of .Ursa Minor, the L.easer Bear, which constellation also has the ap- iproximate shape of a dipper, but the stars composing 1t are not nearly so prominent those of it's larger rcompanion. On the opposite side of the Pole and at about the same dis dance from it as the Big Dtpper is the constellation CasHopeia, easily recog-