The portion of Canes Venatici, represented in [map No. 26], contains two or three remarkable objects. Σ 1606 is a close double, magnitudes six and seven, distance 1", p. 336°. It is a pretty sight with the five-inch. The double star 2 is singular in that its larger component is red and its smaller blue; magnitudes six and eight, distance 11.4", p. 260°. Still more beautiful is 12, commonly called Cor Caroli. This double is wide, and requires but a slight magnifying power. The magnitudes are three and six, distance 20", colors white or light yellow and blue. The nebula 3572, although we can see it only as a pair of misty specks, is in reality a very wonderful object. Lord Rosse's telescope has revealed in it a complicated spiral structure, recalling the photographs of the Andromeda nebula, and indicating that stupendous changes must be in process within it, although our records of observation are necessarily too brief to bring out any perceptible alteration of figure. It would seem that the astronomer has, of all men, the best reasons for complaining of the brevity of human life.
Lastly, we turn to Ursa Minor and the Pole Star. The latter is a celebrated double, not difficult, except with a telescope of less than three inches aperture in the hands of an inexperienced observer. The magnitudes are two and nine, distance 18.5". The small star has a dull blue color. In 1899 it was discovered by spectroscopic evidence that the Pole Star is triple. In π' we see a wide double, magnitudes six and seven, distance 30", p. 83°.
This completes our survey of the starry heavens.
CHAPTER VIII
SCENES ON THE PLANETS
"These starry globes far surpassed the earth in grandeur, and the latter looked so diminutive that our empire, which appeared only as a point on its surface, awoke my pity."—Cicero, The Dream of Scipio.
Although amateurs have played a conspicuous part in telescopic discovery among the heavenly bodies, yet every owner of a small telescope should not expect to attach his name to a star. But he certainly can do something perhaps more useful to himself and his friends; he can follow the discoveries that others, with better appliances and opportunities, have made, and can thus impart to those discoveries that sense of reality which only comes from seeing things with one's own eyes. There are hundreds of things continually referred to in books and writings on astronomy which have but a misty and uncertain significance for the mere reader, but which he can easily verify for himself with the aid of a telescope of four or five inches aperture, and which, when actually confronted by the senses, assume a meaning, a beauty, and an importance that would otherwise entirely have escaped him. Henceforth every allusion to the objects he has seen is eloquent with intelligence and suggestion.