Venus, after she passes the half-moon phase, becomes so bright that she simply overpowers all stars in her neighborhood. Her splendor seems almost supernatural, and she has frequently been seen at high noon, a point of intense light burning in the blue sky.

Jupiter’s entrance into any constellation immediately alters its familiar aspect, and he becomes its unquestioned leader, and remains such until his slow eastward motion carries him on to reign in another quarter of the firmament. He is never more impressive than when, in consequence of the annual revolution of the heavens, he rises late some night and takes the lingering star-gazer by surprise. Then all the stellar hosts that for hours have held the watcher spellbound cease their incantation in the presence of this great counter-charmer, to whose power they, too, seem to bow. Although Venus at her brightest outshines Jupiter, she lacks a certain majesty which he alone possesses. His light is calm, steady, insistent, commanding. He does not look like a star, but rather a superstar. If he beams at all, it is not the hurried scintillation of the twinkling multitude around him. Rising through a moisture-laden and wind-swept sky, where the stars are like pulsating atoms, shaken apart and scattered in tinsel showers of rainbow sparks, he glows unflickering, recognizing the aerial tumult only by a deepening of color which makes him the more imposing. As he mounts the heights of the sky he gleams ever brighter and ever steadier, and, casting off the tarnish of the horizon, his supereminent light glows with a splendor that is amazing. If you have an eye that can detect one or two of Jupiter’s moons hiding close in his rays, you may boast of your powers of vision, for that feat has been accomplished by very few human beings. Humboldt heard of a German “master tailor” who could do it. There are a few other cases on record. Most persons cannot see them even with the aid of a strong opera-glass. There is a superstition that they can be seen with a looking-glass, but it is only ghostly reflections that are thus perceived—perhaps as real as any other ghosts.

Saturn, although as bright as a first-magnitude star, is somewhat disappointing as a naked-eye object, owing to the relative dulness of its light. Like Jupiter, it shines with great steadiness, and a practised eye could not mistake it for a fixed star. But its appearance without a telescope gives no hint of the unearthly beauty with which it astonishes the beholder when its rings are rendered visible. Not to have seen those rings at least once in a lifetime, as they appear in a powerful telescope, is to have missed one of the supreme spectacles of creation.

Mars is never very brilliant except during favorable oppositions, when, approaching within less than 40,000,000 miles of the earth, it hangs in the midnight sky, gleaming red like a portent of disaster. The aspect of Mars at such times is truly alarming. It is surprising to see what a quantity of stained sunlight a world only about four thousand miles in diameter is able to reflect across so vast a gap of space. The reason why the ancients connected Mars with the god of war is plain enough when he puts on his color.

Close conjunctions of the bright planets are exceedingly interesting phenomena. Mars and Jupiter seen together when the former is near one of its favorable oppositions make a scene of strange beauty. After long intervals of time several of these great planets sometimes assemble in the same quarter, and such conjunctions are always memorable occurrences. The stars are forgotten in the presence of this new constellation, and yet the tiniest of the sparks that seems to hide its light in the depths beyond would master these great planets and make gravitational slaves of them, as the sun does.

The planets are so conspicuous to our eyes, because of their relative nearness, that it is not easy for the beginner in such studies to realize how insignificant they actually are. But suppose that one could fly like a spirit away from the earth and the neighborhood of the sun, out into the deeps of interstellar space. As he moved away the planets would seem to be swallowed up, one after the other, in the solar rays. First Mercury would disappear, as if it had fallen into the sun. It would be just like two neighboring lights which appear to draw together and blend into one as the observer travels away from them, the greater swallowing the less. Then brilliant Venus would go, plunging into the great solar furnace, to be seen no more. Next the earth would follow in the perspective holocaust. Mars would seem to draw nearer until he, too, disappeared; Jupiter would follow; then Saturn; then Uranus, and finally Neptune. When the last planet was gone the sun would be seen shining alone, unattended, as if he had never had any planets. Thus it may be with the stars; most of them may have systems of planets circling round them, but at our distance these planets are concealed in the rays of their primaries.

One would not need to go so far away as the stars in order to see the sun apparently swallow his planets, as Saturn was fabled to have swallowed his children. But as one approached the stellar region, the sun itself would become a mere star. Fainter and fainter it appears, glimmering and twinkling, deprived of its dominance, stripped of its splendor, a pitiful spark now instead of an all-ruling and blinding maker of daylight, until at last the far voyager from the earth, gazing with his soul in his eyes, straining his vision to the utmost to hold that glinting point clear of its fellows, for it is his sun, suddenly, as a momentary film blurs his sight, loses it, and henceforth seek as he may among the countless hosts that spangle the firmament, he will never again find the day-star under whose cheery beams he was born! Hidden in the Milky Way, one would have no more chance of recognizing the sun than of finding a particular grain of sand on the sea-shore. Man physical is as insignificant as the rock he dwells on and as the eye-searing orb that lights him at his daily work; but man spiritual is as great as the universe—and greater!

APPENDIX
URANOGRAPHY OR HEAVENLY DESCRIPTION OF THE CHURCHMEN

Many readers may be interested in seeing a list of the names given to the constellations when, as mentioned in the Introduction, the starry sky was “Christianized.” In the seventeenth century Julius Schillerius put forth his Cœlum Stellatum Christianum, and Jacobus Bartschius a celestial globe, in which all of the well-known constellations received new and strictly orthodox names. Unfortunately the sponsors for these names did not always agree in their choice, and a certain Harsdorfius (who may have been the poet Philip Harsdoerfer, born at Nuremberg in 1607) added to the confusion by further varying the selection. Wilhelm Schickard also introduced variations. In the following list the first of the “Christian” names given is that chosen by Schillerius, while their variants are due to either Harsdorfius, Schickard, or Bartschius: