Pollux is very near the standard first magnitude in brightness. It has a slightly orange tint in contrast with the whiteness of Castor. Like Orion, Taurus, and Auriga, Gemini offers splendid fields of stars for the opera-glass. A cluster, M35, not far above the place of the summer solstice, is an object of rare beauty when seen with a low telescopic power.
South of Gemini shines the bright star Procyon in Canis Minor, the Lesser Dog. This star, whose name implies the “Preceder, or Announcer, of the Dog,” because it rises a little ahead of Sirius, is the only bright star of its constellation. It is interesting for having a dusky companion whose existence was detected by the effects of its attraction before any telescope had revealed it. With this companion Procyon forms a binary system with a period of revolution of about forty years. The star Beta (β) is named Gomeisa, from an Arabic word meaning the “Dim One.” Procyon, Sirius, and Betelgeuse form a magnificent triangle, through which flows the Milky Way.
We now return to the western part of the sky, where we see, beyond Eridanus, the vast expanse covered by the constellation Cetus, the “Whale.” The head lies on and over the equator above the western bend of Eridanus. It is marked by a striking group of stars, of which Alpha (α), or Menkar, the “Nose,” is the chief. The star Gamma (γ) is a fine double; colors yellow and blue; distance 2″.5. Below and toward the west will be found Omicron (ο), better known by its popular title of Mira, the “Wonderful.” In some respects this is the most extraordinary of all variable stars. It excited great astonishment when its variations were first recorded in the seventeenth century. Most of the time it is entirely invisible to the naked eye; but once in about ten months it begins to brighten, and in a few weeks becomes conspicuous, sometimes equalling the second magnitude in brightness. Then it fades again, and in about three months disappears from naked-eye vision, although it is never lost to the telescope, which follows it down to the ninth magnitude, at which it remains, glowing redly, for several successive months. Its variations are more or less irregular both in period and in brightness. The causes are only conjectural. About all that we can say is that here is a sun which once every ten months blazes up to a thousand or fifteen hundred times its ordinary brilliancy. The imagination can work its will with such a star as that.
The western part of Cetus is marked by a striking group of stars shaped something like the bowl of an upturned dipper and by a lone, bright star still farther west, Beta (β), or Deneb Kaitos, the “Tail of the Whale.”
Above Cetus runs the long line of stars composing the constellation Pisces, now the leader of the zodiac, since it contains the Vernal Equinox. Alpha (α), or Al Rischa, the “Cord,” because it marks the ribbon imagined to bind two fishes together by their tails, is directly under the stars marking the head of Aries, to which we have already referred. It is a double of very singular colors—green and blue. The distance is about 3″.6. From Al Rischa the stars of the constellation stream northward to the figure of the Northern Fish, whose nose touches Andromeda, and westward to the Western Fish, which is situated under the Great Square of Pegasus. The extraordinary tendency of the stars of Pisces to run in streaming lines has been spoken of in Chapter III.
The other stars and constellations now visible are already familiar to us. But we turn again for a moment to Polaris, which, being practically fixed in the sky, can be seen at any season. I have referred to the fact that this star for a long series of centuries has been a universal guide to all the inhabitants of the northern hemisphere. In that character its history is no less romantic than practically important. One of the deepest impressions of my childhood was produced by an acquaintance with a remarkable man who at that time seemed to me to be a most wonderful traveller, since he had seen the Gulf of Mexico, the Everglades of Florida, the Dismal Swamp of Virginia, and, according to his story (which no boy would doubt), had battled with alligators and tasted the delights of vagabond life on the great cotton plantations of the South. I think he was the first who ever pointed out the North Star to me, and he fired my imagination by tales of its connection with the escape of negro slaves—escapes in which he professed to have played a part. Many long winter evenings he sat by my father’s fireside and fascinated his hearers with narratives of his adventures. But nothing interested me more than what he said of the slaves following the lead of the North Star, through the darkness of tangled swamps, among deadly moccasins and lurking alligators, always fixing their eyes upon “the star,” falling on their knees to it as their only friend and guide. Trembling at the bay of pursuing bloodhounds, they would lie in concealment during the daylight hours, and as soon as night came on would look for their celestial sentinel, and follow unquestioningly its indication of the way to freedom. However apocryphal these stories may have been, they certainly had a basis of truth, and the impressions then produced upon my mind concerning the character of Polaris as the sure friend of those who are lost and in trouble have remained undimmed in my memory. What a triumph will be that of the man who first visits the north pole by night, and sees that star gleaming directly over his head, while all the constellations solemnly circle about it, unresting and unsetting!
FOOTNOTES:
[2] It should be said that throughout this book I am indebted for many of the translations of star names to Richard Hinckley Allen’s Star Names and Their Meanings, the most complete work of its kind in existence.
V
THE PLANETS
The beginner will often be troubled in his observations by the presence in some constellation of a brilliant object which outshines all of the stars shown in his charts, and is plainly an interloper among them. He may at once set the stranger down for one of the planets—it may be Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, or Venus, or possibly, if close to the horizon, Mercury. Uranus and Neptune will not disturb his equanimity, for the latter is never, and the former seldom, visible to the naked eye.