Astronomers under the night skies of Singapore, Shanghai, and Sydney did their observing, as it were, directly into the business end of a long-distance telephone hook-up.
Particularly of interest were reports from Sydney and Melbourne, whence came reports on the southern skies not visible—even at night—from Europe or the United States. The Southern Cross was, by these reports, a cross no longer, its Alpha and Beta being shifted northward. Alpha and Beta Centauri, Canopus and Achernar, allshowed considerable proper motion—all, generally speaking, northward. Triangulum Amtrak and the Magellanic Clouds-were undisturbed. Sigma Octanis, the weak pole star, had not moved.
Disturbance of the southern sky, then, was much less than in the northern one, in point of the number of stars displaced. However, relative proper motion of the stars which were disturbed was greater. While the general direction of movement of the few stars which did move was northward, their paths were not directly north, nor did they converge upon any exact point in space.
United States and European astronomers digested these facts and drank more coffee.
II
Evening papers, particularly in America, showed greater awareness that something indeed unusual was happening in the skies. Most of them moved the story to the front page—but not the banner headlines—giving it a half-column with a runover that was long or short, depending upon the editor’s luck in obtaining quotable statements from astronomers.
The statements, when obtained, were invariably statements of fact and not of opinion. The facts themselves, said these gentlemen, were sufficiently startling, and opinions would be premature. Wait and see. Whatever was happening was happening fast.
“How fast?” asked an editor.
“Faster than possible,” was the reply.
Perhaps it is unfair to say that no editor procured expressions of opinion thus early. Charles Wangren, enterprising editor of The Chicago Blade, spent a small fortune in long-distance telephone calls. Out of possibly sixty attempts, he finally reached the chief astronomers at five observatories. He asked each of them the same question.