Let us now consider the phenomena of the double stars. These were formerly believed to be single orbs, but the more powerful telescopes of recent years have shown them to consist of two suns, each substantially similar to our own sun, revolving around each other at a relatively small distance apart. In Appleton’s Cyclopædia, article “Star,” we read, “It is noteworthy that few simple stars show such colors as blue, green, violet, or indigo; but among double and multiple star systems not only are these colors recognized, but such colors as lilac, olive, gray, russet, and so on. A beautiful feature in many double stars remains to be noticed: it is often found that the components exhibit complementary colors. This is oftener seen among unequal doubles, and then the larger component shows a color from the red end of the spectrum, as red, orange, or yellow, while the smaller shows the corresponding color from the blue end, as green, blue, or purple. The colors are real, not merely the result of contrast, for when the larger star is concealed the color of the smaller remains (in most cases) unchanged. Spectrum analysis shows that the colors of many double stars are due to the absorptive vapors cutting off certain portions of the light …. The components are circling around each other, or rather around their common center of gravity.” Professor Ball, in his work “In the High Heavens,” says, “There is no more pleasing phenomenon in sidereal astronomy than that presented by the contrasted hues often exhibited by double stars …. It seemed not at all impossible that there might be some optical explanation of colors so vividly contrasted emanating from points so contiguous. It was also remembered that blue stars were generally only present as one member of an associated pair …. When, however, Dr. Huggins showed that the actual spectrum of the object demonstrated that the cause of the color in each star arose from absorption by its peculiar atmosphere, it became impossible to doubt the reality of the phenomena. Since then it has been for physicists to explain why two closely neighboring stars should differ so widely in their atmospheric constituents, for it can be no longer contended that their beautiful hues arise from an optical illusion.”
Of these double stars with complementary colors we quote the following from Professor Dunkin (who, in turn, quotes from Admiral Smyth, the author of “Sidereal Chromatics”): “In Eta Cassiopeiæ the large star is a dull white and the smaller one lilac; in Gamma Andromedæ, a deep yellow and sea-green; in Iota Cancri, a dusky orange and a sapphire blue; in Delta Corvi, a bright yellow and purple; and in Albiero, or Beta Cygni, yellow and blue. In most of the remaining stars of the list the contrasting colors are equally marked, and also in many others which are not included in it.” Some of these double stars are variable in their colors, as are the ordinary single variables, and, of course, for a similar reason,—to wit, the varying intensity of more or less cumulative planetary impacts.
Reduced from Plate X. of Nichol’s work. For interpretation see Chapter XIII., “The Genesis of Solar Systems.”
The interpretation, of course, as explained below, is that these suns, each one of different mass and consequently of different electrical resistance, are arranged in parallel circuit along a single line of electric current; a pair of different-sized arc or incandescent lamps, similarly arranged, would exhibit precisely the same phenomena. A compound solar system of this sort, apparently, with double sun and single planetary system in process of formation, nearly completed from a spiral nebula, is shown in a gaseous nebula within the constellation Ursa Minor, illustrated in Lord Rosse’s drawing (see Nichols “Architecture of the Heavens,” Plate X., lower figure).
More than three thousand of these binary stars have been catalogued, and some of them make a complete revolution about their common centers of gravity—so distant are they from each other—in periods of not less than sixty, or even eighty, years. Of the double star Mizar,—the middle one of the three which form the tail of the Great Bear,—Professor Ball states that, by new methods of spectroscopic analysis, the component stars which form this double have been found to be one hundred and fifty millions of miles apart, while Alcor, a smaller star, visible to the naked eye, and enormously farther from Mizar than are the components of the latter from each other, moves through space in a parallel direction and with the same velocity as its double companion. What the connection may be, if any, we do not know, but their identical course is obviously related to some common circumstance of origin, as is the probable case with those other groups of stars which drift through space together. They show that solar systems are not necessarily individual creations, but may be formed in groups at the same period of time, and by the operation of natural laws simultaneously directed upon or into the creative matter from which solar systems are built up and sent along their way. It has been already shown that our sun has a motion around the center of gravity of our own solar system, as a whole, similar to that of the binary stars around each other, but that, by reason of his vast relative mass (seven hundred and fifty to one for all the planets), this center is always within the confines of his own volume. If, however, our sun were divided into two suns one, two, or five million miles apart, each revolving around a common center of gravity situated between the two, and the planets revolving around the same center of gravity, but relatively more distant, the planets would thus rotate around both suns as a common center, and with the electric polarity of both suns the same, as must necessarily be the case, they would present phenomena precisely similar to those exhibited by the double stars. And such might very easily be the case in even a system so small as our own, for the planet Mercury has so elliptical an orbit that its distance from the sun varies in different parts of its annual movement from twenty-eight to forty-five millions of miles. There would then be mutual electric repulsion of the two solar electrospheres, such as we see in the case of comets and in the sun’s corona and long streamers. Professor Proctor, article “The Sun’s Long Streamers,” says, “These singular appendages, like the streamers seen by Professor Abbe, extend directly from the sun, as if he exerted some repellent action …. I cannot but think that the true explanation of these streamers, whatever it may be (I am not in the least prepared to say what it is), will be found whensoever astronomers have found an explanation of comets’ tails …. Whether the repulsive force is electrical, magnetic, or otherwise, does not at present concern us, or rather does concern us, but at present we are quite unable to answer the question.” A similar example is to be found in the self-repellent positive electrospheres of the earth and moon, illustrated on a previous page, which, in fact, are types among planets of precisely what we find in double stars. Now, if these double central suns, with a common system of planets revolving around them both, differ one from the other in size, they will differ also in the depth and density of their hydrogen atmospheres, and the electric forces directed against them will produce different results in each. In one we will have high temperature, great volatilization, and wide absorption bands; in the other, a shallow atmosphere, a temperature below that of an extensive volatilization of its metallic components, and a spectrum rich in light at the blue end, while the former one will be correspondingly richer in the yellow and red rays at the opposite and lower end of the spectrum. One, in fact, will manifest the phenomena of blue-white stars, the other, those of orange-red, but variously modified in a chromatic series. The case may be extended to multiple stars, and complementary colors, more or less perfect, may be almost predicated as the law of compound solar bodies having cores like that of our sun, but each of different mass, and surrounded by hydrogen atmospheres of different depths and densities, both acted upon by the same exterior planetary electrical currents. It is certainly true of double stars, and probably so of all the others. Of course such enormously massive double suns presuppose enormous planets, rotating around them at enormous distances; but when we compare the distance of our own satellite, the moon, from the earth with the distance of Neptune from the sun, and consider that the light of the sun will reach Neptune in about four hours, and then compare this distance with the inconceivable distances of space requisite to retard and merge all radiant energy into the diffused molecular energy of position, our wonder will cease.
Double stars with complementary colors.—A, B, C, D, planets; S, S′, double central sun; S, larger sun, with dark absorption spectrum, yellow-red, or orange; S′, smaller sun, many bright lines, bluish-white; E, E′, lines of planetary energy; S, S′ also show self-repulsion of their solar electrospheres.
We have also to consider those single stars which (see Appleton’s Cyclopædia, article “Star”) are variable in their brilliancy. “These stars may be divided into periodic variables, irregular variables, and temporary stars. Periodic variable stars are those which undergo increase and diminution of light at regular intervals. Thus, the star Mira, or Omicron of Cetus, varies in lustre, in a period of three hundred and thirty-one and one-third days, from the second magnitude to a faintness such that the star can only be seen with a powerful telescope, and thence to the second magnitude again. It shines for about a fortnight as a star of the second magnitude, and then remains invisible for five months, the decrease of lustre occupying about three months, the increase about seven weeks. Such is the general course of its phases. It does not always, however, return to the same degree of brightness, nor increase and diminish by the same gradations; neither are the successive intervals of its maxima equal. From recent observations and inquiries into its history, the mean period would appear to be subject to a cyclical fluctuation embracing eighty-eight such periods, and having the effect of gradually lengthening and shortening alternately those intervals to the extent of twenty-five days one way and the other. The irregularities in the degree of brightness attained at the maximum are probably also periodical …. It suggests a probable explanation of these changes of brightness, that when the star is near its minimum, its color changes from white to a full red, which, from what we know of the spectra of colored stars, seems to indicate that the loss of brightness is due to the formation of many spots over the surface of this distant sun.
“Algol is another remarkable variable, passing, however, much more rapidly through all its changes. It is ordinarily a second-magnitude star, but during about seven hours in each period of sixty-nine hours its lustre first diminishes until the star is reduced to a fourth magnitude, and after it has remained twenty minutes at its minimum its lustre is gradually restored. It remains a second-magnitude star for about sixty-two hours in each period of sixty-nine hours. These changes seem to correspond to what might be expected if a large opaque orb is circling around this distant sun in a period of sixty-nine hours, transiting its disk at regular intervals.”