The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-12-21

Beautiful white Venus continues to glow in the western sky appearing right after the setting of the sun; except for the moon, it is the bright est of all the celestial bodies of the night and is easily visible, even in the early twilight, long before the brighter of the first-magnitude stars have become distinguishable to the naked eye.
 Venus is moving eastward in the sky with respect to the sun, and therefore getting up higher in the sky at sunset and staying above the this month and in February it will set shortly after o'clock and thus make it's appearance on the monthly map.
 Mars is still close to Venus and is also visible after sunset but not quite so early as the latter planet, Jupiter and Saturn are both evening stars, rising before midnight, not carly enough, however, to appear or the 9 o'clock map; but it will not be very Hong before they will be found there.
 Uranus and Neptune are the only members of the solar family on the map this month, the former far town on the western horizon and the latter at the opposite point of the compass, not far above the hori- zon in the east. A
 Collection of Great Stars
 The great collection of first-mag- nitude stars in the part of the heav- ems surrounding and including the constellation Orion, is now in excel lent position for observation as it has moved toward the west sufficiently by o'clock to bring the leading con stellation of Taurus, the bull, right up to the meridian where will be found that gem of a star cluster, the Pleiades. Aldebaran, the brightest of the Taurus constellation, is slight ly behind the cluster, and then come Orion, the two Dogs and. to the northward, Gemini, the Heaven ly Twins
 Last month we discussed Orion and it's Belt of three stars of equal magnitude so placed that the central one is almost exactly halfway be- tween the other two. If you pro- long the Belt westward it points fairly well to Aldebaran; if east ward, it points to Sirius, the Greater Dog.
 The Twins are easily recognized because of their equal brightness and proximity Their distance apart is about half again as great as the length of Orion's belt. Between Sir jus and Gemini is the Lesser Dog, Procyon It's name means the fore somewhat earlier than Sirius itself Almost overhead is Capel1a, a great 1 white star, whose light resembles iT ; quality or cclor that of the sun. Bu CapelEL IS several nundTeu times ds great a radiator of light as the sun and if we were on possibly existing planet of Capella the latter would ap. pear to us as less than a star of the fifth magnitude. just on the border line of visibility.
 Capella is the third brightest stal visible from our attitudes; it is ex ceeded in brilliancy only by Siriu: and Vega, which has already set. It: distance from the earth is abou thirty-four light years or thirty-foul times 365 times twenty-four time: sixty times sixty times 186,000 miles
 The spectroscope shows that Ca bella. is moving away from the sola1 system at the rate of twenty mile: per second and it also shows another very interesting fact that Capella i really not one single star but is binary star a double sun composed of two stars revolving about thei common center of gravity. The! take about 101 days to go around one another at an average distanc