Fig. 2.—The paths of circumpolar stars, shewing their movement during seven hours. From a photograph by Mr. H. Pain. The thickest line is the path of the pole star.
To face p. 8.
10. A slight familiarity with the stars is enough to shew any one that the same stars are not always visible at the same time of night. Rather more careful observation, carried out for a considerable time, is necessary in order to see that the aspect of the sky changes in a regular way from night to night, and that after the lapse of a year the same stars become again visible at the same time. The explanation of these changes as due to the motion of the sun on the celestial sphere is more difficult, and the unknown discoverer of this fact certainly made one of the most important steps in early astronomy.
Fig. 3.—The circles of the celestial sphere.
If an observer notices soon after sunset a star somewhere in the west, and looks for it again a few evenings later at about the same time, he finds it lower down and nearer to the sun; a few evenings later still it is invisible, while its place has now been taken by some other star which was at first farther east in the sky. This star can in turn be observed to approach the sun evening by evening. Or if the stars visible after sunset low down in the east are noticed a few days later, they are found to be higher up in the sky, and their place is taken by other stars at first too low down to be seen. Such observations of stars rising or setting about sunrise or sunset shewed to early observers that the stars were gradually changing their position with respect to the sun, or that the sun was changing its position with respect to the stars.
The changes just described, coupled with the fact that the stars do not change their positions with respect to one another, shew that the stars as a whole perform their daily revolution rather more rapidly than the sun, and at such a rate that they gain on it one complete revolution in the course of the year. This can be expressed otherwise in the form that the stars are all moving westward on the celestial sphere, relatively to the sun, so that stars on the east are continually approaching and those on the west continually receding from the sun. But, again, the same facts can be expressed with equal accuracy and greater simplicity if we regard the stars as fixed on the celestial sphere, and the sun as moving on it from west to east among them (that is, in the direction opposite to that of the daily motion), and at such a rate as to complete a circuit of the celestial sphere and to return to the same position after a year.