Footnotes:
[1] Published at 5s. by Gall & Inglis, Edinburgh and London.
[2] Stars are classified by astronomers in “magnitudes,” i.e. degrees of brightness, those of first magnitude being the brightest. Stars below sixth magnitude cannot be seen with the naked eye.
[3] Compare Aratus:
“The Virgin and the Claws, the Scorpion,
The Archer and the Goat.”
[4] Right ascension in the skies corresponds with longitude on earth, but is more often reckoned in time than in degrees. For instance, R.A. 1 hour 35 minutes, the right ascension of Achernar, means that this star will be on the meridian 1 hour 35 minutes later than the “first point of Aries”—that is, the point at which the equator cuts the ecliptic at the spring equinox, the fundamental point corresponding with Greenwich in earthly longitude.
[5] The stars ε and ι Carinae, κ and δ Velorum, form a cross much like the Southern Cross, but less bright, and this is called the False Cross.
[6] A “binary” is a system of two stars which are known to be comparatively close together and influencing one another’s movements. A “double star” may be a binary, or the two stars may really be very far apart and have no connection, merely happening to lie one nearly behind the other.
[7] Now often called Eta Carinae, since Argo has been subdivided ([see p. 7]).