Part 4

I am not sure of that, father; for ever since you proved that the Fixed stars were not fixed, I think I might some day find a bright friend gone on a visit to another universe somewhere; perhaps, getting into such agreeable society as to have no wish to come back again to our visible universe; or, maybe, to pop back again in his place.

It so happens, James, that what you have imagined, really takes place. Some stars do really disappear, to return, or not; and others, wholly strangers to us, come within observation.

That is the queerest thing you have told me yet. What droll fellows the stars are, after all! How they do wriggle about, polkaing here, doubling there, and fielding about like boys at cricket. I shall never be surprised at any funny trick you ascribe to them.

To begin with the _Variable stars_, of which there are known about one hundred. There is Mira, which is invisible five months in the year. It goes and comes again.

Where could it have got to?

Some think it revolving round a dark object; and, of course, becoming invisible when on the other side from us. One passes through three magnitudes in one month.

But I must give you the history of such a curious star in the Whale. For two weeks you might see it a noble star of the second magnitude. It gradually dims, till it goes fairly out of sight in three months. For five weeks you see nothing of it. It then reappears. Altogether it seems to have a revolution of 322 days; and is, therefore, one of the _Periodical_ stars.

I should call it a variable periodical.

There is another in Cepheus, which grows to its full light in thirty-eight hours only. There is one in the Lyre taking ninety-one hours. Some fancy that the dark appearance may be owing to huge spots on the suns coming into view as the suns turn round. But there is still another sort of star--the _Temporary_.

Do they come and have a look at us in their birth, and then disappear never to return?

I will tell you the history of one. In 1572 an astronomer saw it shining in the daytime. He could not find it in his star catalogue at home. Day after day it grew brighter and brighter, till it blazed far more than either Sirius or Jupiter, and could be plainly seen in the noontide sun. It then grew dim gradually, and in two years went away altogether, without returning since.

That is temporary, and no mistake. But still I guess they will find him turning up some day and becoming a regular Periodical.

There is a wonderful star, Argus, in Argo. Two hundred years ago it was of the fourth magnitude only. In 1834, Sir John Herschel, when at the Cape of Good Hope, found it a second magnitude. The light was three times stronger at the end of 1837. Next month it was brighter than any star here but Sirius. It faded awhile, and then increased, till, in 1844, it was equal to Sirius itself.

Have they looked over the old catalogues of stars, made, as you told me, two thousand years ago, just to see what ones have dropped out of sight, father?

Yes, and several have disappeared which were on that list.”

MILKY WAY.

The stars were out in their very best humour, looking so clear and merry in their twinkling; while the Milky Way stole out to view in all its maiden, lily beauty. Can we wonder, then, that our young voyager sang out--

“O what a splendid starlight night! There seems to be ever so many more stars than usual. Can any one count them all?

Yes; those you now see are about 2000. But the telescope shows us far more. There are 50,000 regularly catalogued. A magnifying power of 180 would give 20,000,000. A small patch of the Milky Way has revealed millions of stars.

Milky Way, father! O that is that serpent-like twisting of white stuff across the heavens. But why should it look so white and all other parts so black?

Because it is there that most of the stars lie, and give out the brightest light.

But I don’t see that the milk is all stars.

Take up the telescope and look at that white patch near that red star.

What a pretty sight! Why, a lot of the milk has turned into stars already. I am sure there must be a tremendous lot to be seen through the telescope of an astronomer.

Do you remember the Milky Way on the northern side of the equator?

Yes, father, and I think it a prettier looking white snake in the sky than this one up here, for it had more spangling stars about it.

I must say that the northern constellations are more brilliant than those of the south.

And what a great bit of the south side has hardly any stars at all. Just look, father, there to the westward, and there to the eastward. They both look as if lighted up with a few children’s toy-candles, compared to the dazzling light of the north, and right overhead toward the south.

The Milky Way is narrowest near the Southern Cross, and widens both ways after. Near the Scorpion’s tail it is very broad--about twenty degrees, while at the Cross it is about four degrees. There is a curious opening in it near Sirius, like a long, narrow, dark lake among the mountains of snow.

And I can see one star at the end, like a ship in full sail upon the lake.

The Milky Way runs up in threads near the Scorpion. From the Swan down to the Southern Cross it is in two bright lines, enclosing a long dark space.

But look at the two pretty bridges over the black waters, connecting the two shining walks at the sides.

You remember, then, that the Milky Way, seen in the north and south, is a great ring of different breadths going round the heavens, and passing at some little distance from both poles.

It is like the Egyptian story you told me, father, of the people worshipping a serpent with his tail in his mouth. How singular that this milk-stream should be poured right round the heavens in a huge broad circle!

The Galaxy, or Milky Way, is seen to great advantage near the Cross.

It is about the milkiest in that quarter. And I can make a good guess now about the two Magellanic clouds, as the captain called them--these two clouds of light not far from the Cross. Why, they are only places where the shining stuff is thickest.

You would, then, really believe there might be lots of stars in those clouds.

Yes; but what are the two black clouds?

Look at them attentively, and tell me what you think of them?

There is no milk there, anyhow. I suppose they look black by contrast with the bright clouds near. How cold and dreary they seem! And yet now I can make out a few stars scattered about, like ships on a big sea at a great distance from one another.

The early navigators southward used to call them the _Coal Sacks_, because so black.

Why, the Southern Cross seems to rise from that pear-shaped Coal Sack, and all at once to get crowned with a blaze of light.

True, my dear boy. The Cross of our faith has often brought man from the darkness of doubt and misery into the glorious light of freedom and hope.

Thank you, kind father, for saying that. I do trust I may always have the cross shining on my way through life.”

THE NEBULÆ.

How wondrous a sight did James think the Milky Way! Evening after evening would he stare at the weird-looking object. Moonlight eclipsed it, as sunlight the stars. The atmosphere through which we contemplate the heavens at times obscures their glory. That dreamy radiance is easily concealed from view. The bold planet looks down upon us with an unblinking eye. The fixed stars peep more coyly, with an uncertain lustre. The Milky Way, yet more retiring, seldom deigns to do more than glance timidly at us here. With our magnificent climate in Australia, we are favoured beyond most countries with its soft, peculiar light.

“What is a Nebula, father? said James.

A white, cloudy patch in the heavens. There are about five thousands of them scattered about space.

You said the Milky Way was made up of stars and Nebulæ, and that many patches of white, when looked at with a good telescope, turn out to be only lots of stars.

Yes. These are the _Resolvable_ Nebulæ. But there are _Irresolvable_,--that is, some of them still look cloudy with our best telescopes. Can you find me a Nebula in Orion?

What must I look for?

A small, distinct, white patch of light.

No; I don’t see it.

Look again. Do you see the Belt, with a bright star over it, and one about the same distance below it?

I see all that clear enough, but not your Nebula.

Look, boy, steadily and closely between the Belt, and that top bright star Rigel, where on the Atlas is pictured the sword-handle of the great hunter.

I don’t feel very sure, but I fancy I can distinguish something that ought to be it.

Many folks, my boy, can see what they are told to expect. Well, that white irregular patch of light has had telescopes looking at it a good while, without anything being seen beyond a dreamy-looking cloudy matter.

I’ll be bound Lord Rosse solved the riddle.

He did not for some time. He was able at last to think he could see stars; then by more patient watching he resolved the Nebula into sandheaps of stars--millions upon millions.

What! millions upon millions where other telescopes could not distinguish one star. What shape is Orion’s Nebula?

It is rather patchy, with innumerable streamers of light, as if wind were blowing the gauze stuff about in all directions. You might fancy in it the jaws and head of a monster, with an elephant’s proboscis.

What a nice little nose that must be.

One part rises like a conical cloud in the midst of the black sky. In the part which had appeared mottled Rosse found a blaze of stars.

Can all the Nebulæ be observed by the naked eye?

No, my lad, very few.

But after all they are only lots of stars got crowded together like, because they are so far from us.

Yet there are Nebulæ not to be resolved into stars even by Rosse’s six feet mirror. Just turn round to the Southern Cross. You see the two bright Pointers to the Cross, a part of the Centaur. Look now to the other side of the Cross, where there is a collection of stars scattered about. That is the _Argo_ or ship.

Ah! I can see a sort of light there. Is that the Argo Nebula?

Yes, and a very large one it is. Thousands of stars can be observed in it by the telescope; but beyond these is still the same filmy light, as irresolvable as ever.

There must be a lot of Nebulæ by the Cross, judging by the blaze of light.

There is a very fine one there, of a blue colour. One near Spica, of the Virgin, is quite round, and of enormous size. But there is a very odd Crab Nebula between Orion and the Bull’s eye. It branches out like the claws of a crab.

What an enormous Crab!

We have a Dumb-bell Nebula near the Lyre.

Oh! who could swing that about? Pray tell me some more about these queer creatures, father.

Many in the south are planetary Nebulæ, as they are in the midst of a cluster of stars. They are always of a pale blue colour. Some are double ones. About a dozen Nebulæ are annular, or ring-shaped. Some are double or treble ringed. Others have rings within rings, and star-like eyes in the darkness. A few have a long, parsnip form. There are solid Nebulæ, and hollow ones. One near Castor was found by Rosse to be arched like eyebrows above and below, with a curious, crab-like form in the middle.

I wonder what it would look like should a better telescope reach it!

Wonder, indeed! Some Nebulæ seen by Herschel get quite another shape with Rosse. The six-feet mirror gives another look to that by the three-feet one.

Then I can scarcely believe the present shapes, as a better instrument may resolve the thing into another creature altogether. But is there any other sort beside the globular and annular?

Yes; a good many are spiral, or corkscrew form.

Something like a shaving that a plane fetches off a plank, father.

But some of your celestial shavings have a wild look. Clever men have fancied that the star-dust is rolling up that way by a sort of gravitation into a regular form.

What of the two clouds in the heavens opposite to the Southern Cross, down in the south? They look uncommonly like monster Nebulæ.

And monsters indeed they are. In the larger one of them three hundred Nebulæ and globular clusters of stars have been distinguished, and fifty in the smaller one.

Then there is room enough in the Cloud for a whole universe?

Yes, when we find the larger Magellanic Cloud, or Nubecula Major, as it is called, taking up many times the space occupied by the sun in the sky. The Nubecula Minor, or Little cloud, is about one-fourth the size of the larger.

What do you mean by Nubecula?

A little cloud. They are called the Magellanic clouds because first noticed in the voyages of Magellan the Portuguese, three hundred years ago.

What a space they must take up in reality!

Especially if, as astronomers believe, the clusters of stars and patches of nebulous matter in the two clouds there are as far off from each other as from this earth.

What is known about the Coal-Sacks?

The larger Coal-Sack, or black empty space not far from the two clouds, is of a pear shape, and occupies a space of eight degrees long by five broad. Its darkness is only comparative, as two hundred stars have been noticed therein by a good telescope.

Are the Nebulæ of the Clouds peculiar?

One in the centre is very large, and has an odd dark space in its middle. It is also surrounded by a circle of ten other Nebulæ.

Like bright guards around a king.

Another consists of four starry centres, or nuclei, which are curiously united by a very faint nebulous matter.

Do, father, tell me more of these Nebulæ.

Then I will talk about some singular filaments, or threads of light, seen around the nebulæ, which have much puzzled astronomers. Those filaments about the Nebulæ of Orion and Argo are wonderfully strange.

They are the arms, I suppose, pointing into the dark space near, as much as to say,--‘You know nothing about us, or of what we can see around us, looking so black to you, and so bright to us.’

Not a bad idea, boy. When Sir John Herschel had a look at our southern hemisphere, he observed beyond the Nebulæ a few scattered, faint bits of light in the dark region, too fine for him to turn into Nebulæ by his glass, and looking like some more distant light blushing through the darkness.

They are like telegraphic messages, father.

About forty of these strange glimmerings of future universes yet to be revealed were seen by Sir John.

Well, dear father, you can’t go further than that. If it take 60,000 years for some of the stars to send us their light, just to say ‘How do you do?’ how long would it take for these faint, modest blushes of the distant sky?

How great, then, is God, my son, and how grateful should we be for His notice! Let us so please Him here, that after death our souls may fly to that heaven of joy He has prepared, wherever in the vast universes of His it may be.”

THE SUN AND PLANETS.

The planet Venus had been shining brilliantly evening after evening. “Why, father,” said the boy, “does Venus shift her place so rapidly among the stars?

Because she has to travel round the sun, as the world and other planets do.

And is the world really a planet, looking like a star to the people of Venus?

Yes; and not visible at all to those of the distant planets, which are all so much nearer to us than the nearest of the fixed stars. Some of the planets you could not see without the telescope, and you see none of the asteroids.

What are they?

Little planets, over eighty in number, perhaps the shattered parts of an exploded planet, travelling along the old road, and keeping a circle between Mars and Jupiter.

Then they are not like the comets, which run everywhere, getting in everybody’s way?

You are slandering the comets. These shadowy bodies, with tails of light, travel in longer ovals or ellipses than the planets. We see them when they turn round the sun, which is near one end of their orbit, but they disappear afterwards in the great distance of their curve.

Well, I _can_ see some use in the sun to us, but very little in the planets and other stars, and none in the comets.

You must not selfishly judge of the good of things by the use you can make of them. The extensive granite ranges were not made merely for man’s building materials, nor the stars for a gaze through a telescope. As the world existed many millions of years without man, so have the stars. In another world we may know more of the why and because of God’s creation.

May not the planets and other stars be inhabited by folks like ourselves?

Not quite, my son, replied Mr. Marple, though God can make intelligent beings to praise Him, who would be adapted to any atmosphere or condition of the stars.”

In the evening the captain lent James a book, from which he copied the following table of the Eight Planets--their distance from the sun, their times of revolution round the sun, and their size:--

Distance. Time. Diameter. Miles. Miles.

Mercury 37,000,000 2 months 3100 Venus 69,000,000 7-1/2 ” 7900 Earth 93,000,000 1 year 7920 Mars 146,000,000 2 years 4000 Jupiter 494,000,000 12 ” 92,000 Saturn 906,000,000 30 ” 75,000 Herschel 1820,000,000 80 ” 36,000 Neptune 2850,000,000 164 ” 33,600

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Text in italics is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

End of Project Gutenberg's Astronomy for Young Australians, by James Bonwick