CELESTIAL PHENOMENA.—JANUARY.
BY D. W. BELISLE.
There is no study that engages so little general attention as that of the planetary world. Yet it is the oldest of all sciences, dating from the hour when, in obedience to the command of Jehovah, "Let there be light," lo! the "God of day" arose with all its brilliancy in the East, while the queen of night, with her myriads of starry attendants, sank softly below the horizon in the West, and all, in their joy at the new creation, sang together in their spheres.
The Chaldeans were the first to divide the starry hosts into constellations, and from them it was introduced into Egypt by Abraham, who gave lectures on astronomy to the Egyptians. From Egypt the Greeks received their knowledge of the hitherto to them unknown science. When Babylon fell into the hands of Alexander, Calisthenes found astronomical observations among the records, dating 1903 years before that period, which carries us back to the time of the dispersion of mankind by the confusion of tongues. Fifteen hundred years after this, the Babylonians sent to Hezekiah to inquire about the shadows going back on the dial of Ahaz. From that period up to the present time it is not difficult to trace the progress this science has made, although sometimes obscured by fanaticism and superstition, which imprisoned the dauntless Galileo for asserting a belief in the unerring laws that bind the whole system of worlds in their spheres.
My object in these articles is not to show why a science that at once elevates and refines the soul, by bringing it to dwell upon the works of Him whence every holy, noble impulse springs that stirs the heart, is so much neglected, except by our professors and astronomers, but to call attention to, and take a cursory view of the most interesting constellations, commencing with Ursa Minor, or the Little Bear. This constellation crosses the meridian in November, and does not properly belong to this month, and is only adverted to here on account of the importance attached to its only star of any magnitude, the Alruccaba of the Jews, the Cynosura of the Romans, and our North Star. By this the mariner ploughs his track fearlessly from continent to continent through the trackless ocean, launches into unknown seas, and, with his eye on the star that never fails him, steers his bark among the icebergs which in the North never yield to the sun, among the frowning peaks of which lurk the messengers of destruction. By this the surveyor determines the boundaries of kingdoms, and by this the Arab and Bedouin traverse their seas of burning sand.
"The Lesser Bear
Leads from the pole the lucid band: the stars
Which from this constellation faintly shine,
Twice twelve in number, only one beams forth