The two pointers on the
forefeet of Centaurus, the
Centaur, and the Southern
Cross.
These two stars are often called the "southern pointers" because they point out the Southern Cross. They belong to the constellation of the Centaur, Alpha Centauri being noted as lying closer to the earth than any other star. The light we call Alpha Centauri comes from two suns instead of one. These suns are separated from each other by a distance of 2,000 million miles and gravitate one round the other in a time equalling 81 of our years.
Above the Cross shines Canopus on the stern of Argo, the ship of the Argonauts. Canopus ranks next to Sirius in brightness. The bright stars of Orion and the Scorpion are each in their season seen high in the sky. Thus the appearance of the heavens would seem quite strange to one who had come from the north.
THE MAGELLANIC CLOUDS
The Magellanic Clouds, which are almost as famous as the Southern Cross, lie to one side of the Milky Way, as seen by persons south of the equator, but they have no apparent connection with our Galaxy of stars. The "clouds" resemble the Milky Way and are easily discernible with the unaided eye, the larger one being 200 times the apparent size of the moon—about as large as the bowl of the Big Dipper—and the smaller one-fourth as large.
Photographs reveal the large Magellanic Cloud as being composed of nebulæ, individual stars and star clusters, the stars ranging from the fifth to the fifteenth magnitude. Flammarion counted 291 distinct nebulæ, 46 clusters and 582 stars. Herschel counted several hundred nebulæ and clusters "which far exceeds anything that is to be met with in any other region of the heavens." Dr. Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard Observatory, found the linear diameter of the cloud to be 15,000 light years, and that it lay at such an immense distance that it required 110,000 years for its light to reach us. This cloud is like a small universe in itself, although many of its stars are anything but small for Dr. Shapley found that hundreds of them exceed the brightness of the sun by 10,000 times.
The large Magellanic Cloud lies between the southern pole and Canopus; the smaller one between Beta Centauri and the pole. These starry clouds, which look so much like real clouds, were named after the celebrated navigator, Magellan.
CHAPTER XI
OUR NEAREST STAR—THE SUN
STARS are suns which lie at such vast distances that they seem no more than twinkling points of light. Through the aid of the spectroscope we have learned a great deal about these stars but so distant do they lie that no telescope on earth can bring them close enough for us to see the outline of a face.
There is one star, however, that lies so near that when it is in the sky its light blots out that of all the other stars. This sun, which classic poets call our "day star," lies only 93,000,000 miles away; the next nearest star is over 200,000 times as far. This distance of 93,000,000 miles is close enough to enable us to examine the face of such a star as ours with comparative ease, indeed, it is close enough to enable us to feel the warmth of the fierce fires which rage upon its surface.