LETTER XXVIII.
FIXED STARS.
——"O, majestic Night! Nature's great ancestor! Day's elder born, And fated to survive the transient sun! By mortals and immortals seen with awe! A starry crown thy raven brow adorns, An azure zone thy waist; clouds, in heaven's loom Wrought, through varieties of shape and shade, In ample folds of drapery divine, Thy flowing mantle form; and heaven throughout Voluminously pour thy pompous train."—Young.
Since the solar system is but one among a myriad of worlds which astronomy unfolds, it may appear to you that I have dwelt too long on so diminutive a part of creation, and reserved too little space for the other systems of the universe. But however humble a province our sun and planets compose, in the vast empire of Jehovah, yet it is that which most concerns us; and it is by the study of the laws by which this part of creation is governed, that we learn the secrets of the skies.
Until recently, the observation and study of the phenomena of the solar system almost exclusively occupied the labors of astronomers. But Sir William Herschel gave his chief attention to the sidereal heavens, and opened new and wonderful fields of discovery, as well as of speculation. The same subject, has been prosecuted with similar zeal and success by his son, Sir John Herschel, and Sir James South, in England, and by Professor Struve, of Dorpat, until more has been actually achieved than preceding astronomers had ventured to conjecture. A limited sketch of these wonderful discoveries is all that I propose to offer you.
The fixed stars are so called, because, to common observation, they always maintain the same situations with respect to one another. The stars are classed by their apparent magnitudes. The whole number of magnitudes recorded are sixteen, of which the first six only are visible to the naked eye; the rest are telescopic stars. These magnitudes are not determined by any very definite scale, but are merely ranked according to their relative degrees of brightness, and this is left in a great measure to the decision of the eye alone. The brightest stars, to the number of fifteen or twenty, are considered as stars of the first magnitude; the fifty or sixty next brightest, of the second magnitude; the next two hundred, of the third magnitude; and thus the number of each class increases rapidly, as we descend the scale, so that no less than fifteen or twenty thousand are included within the first seven magnitudes.
The stars have been grouped in constellations from the most remote antiquity; a few, as Orion, Bootes, and Ursa Major, are mentioned in the most ancient writings, under the same names as they bear at present. The names of the constellations are sometimes founded on a supposed resemblance to the objects to which they belong; as the Swan and the Scorpion were evidently so denominated from their likeness to those animals; but in most cases, it is impossible for us to find any reason for designating a constellation by the figure of the animal or hero which is employed to represent it. These representations were probably once blended with the fables of pagan mythology. The same figures, absurd as they appear, are still retained for the convenience of reference; since it is easy to find any particular star, by specifying the part of the figure to which it belongs; as when we say, a star is in the neck of Taurus, in the knee of Hercules, or in the tail of the Great Bear. This method furnishes a general clue to its position; but the stars belonging to any constellation are distinguished according to their apparent magnitudes, as follows: First, by the Greek letters, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, &c. Thus, Alpha Orionis denotes the largest star in Orion; Beta Andromedæ the second star in Andromeda; and Gamma Leonis, the third brightest star in the Lion. When the number of the Greek letters is insufficient to include all the stars in a constellation, recourse is had to the letters of the Roman alphabet, a, b, c, &c.; and in all cases where these are exhausted the final resort is to numbers. This is evidently necessary, since the largest constellations contain many hundreds or even thousands of stars. Catalogues of particular stars have also been published, by different astronomers, each author numbering the individual stars embraced in his list according to the places they respectively occupy in the catalogue. These references to particular catalogues are sometimes entered on large celestial globes. Thus we meet with a star marked 84 H., meaning that this is its number in Herschel's catalogue; or 140 M., denoting the place the star occupies in the catalogue of Mayer.
The earliest catalogue of the stars was made by Hipparchus, of the Alexandrian school, about one hundred and forty years before the Christian era. A new star appearing in the firmament, he was induced to count the stars, and to record their positions, in order that posterity might be able to judge of the permanency of the constellations. His catalogue contains all that were conspicuous to the naked eye in the latitude of Alexandria, being one thousand and twenty-two. Most persons, unacquainted with the actual number of the stars which compose the visible firmament, would suppose it to be much greater than this; but it is found that the catalogue of Hipparchus embraces nearly all that can now be seen in the same latitude; and that on the equator, where the spectator has both the northern and southern hemispheres in view, the number of stars that can be counted does not exceed three thousand. A careless view of the firmament in a clear night gives us the impression of an infinite number of stars; but when we begin to count them, they appear much more sparsely distributed than we supposed, and large portions of the sky appear almost destitute of stars.
By the aid of the telescope, new fields of stars present themselves, of boundless extent; the number continually augmenting, as the powers of the telescope are increased. Lalande, in his 'Histoire Celeste,' has registered the positions of no less than fifty thousand; and the whole number visible in the largest telescopes amounts to many millions.