CHAPTERS ON THE STARS.
By Professor SIMON NEWCOMB, U. S. N.
Constellations and Star Names.
In ancient times the practice was adopted of imagining the figures of heroes and animals to be so outlined in the heavens as to include in each figure a large group of the brighter stars. In a few cases some vague resemblance may be traced between the configurations of the stars and the features of the object they are supposed to represent; in general, however, the arrangement seems quite arbitrary. One animal or man could be fitted in as well as another. There is no historic record or trace as to the time when the constellations were mapped out, or of the process by which the outlines were traced. The names of heroes, such as Perseus, Cepheus, Hercules, etc., intermingled with the names of goddesses, show that the constellations were probably mapped out during the heroic age. No maps are extant showing exactly how each figure was placed in the constellation; but in the catalogue of stars given by Ptolemy in his ‘Almagest,’ the positions of particular stars on the supposed body of the hero, goddess or animal are designated with such precision as he had at command, in some fairly precise position of the figure. For example, Aldebaran is said to have formed the eye of the Bull. Two other stars marked the right and left shoulders of Orion, and a small cluster marked the position of his head. A row of three stars in a horizontal line showed his belt, three stars in a vertical line below them his sword. In this way the position of the figure can be reproduced with a fair degree of certainty.
In the well-known constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear, familiarly known as the Dipper, three stars form the tail of the animal, and four others a part of his body. This formation is not unnatural, yet the figure of a dipper fits the stars much better than that of a bear. In Cassiopeia, which is on the opposite side of the pole from the Dipper, the brighter stars may easily be imagined to form a chair in which a lady may be seated without further difficulty. As a general rule, however, the resemblances of the stars to the figure are so vague that the latter might be interchanged to any extent without detracting from their appropriateness.
In any case, it was impossible so to arrange the figures that they should cover the entire heavens; blank spaces were inevitably left in which stars might be found. In order to include every star in some constellation, the figures have been nearly ignored by modern astronomers, and the heavens have been divided up, by somewhat irregular lines, into patches, each of which contains the entire figure as recognized by ancient astronomers. But all are not agreed as to the exact outlines of these extended constellations, and, accordingly, a star is sometimes placed in one constellation by one astronomer and in another constellation by another astronomer.
The confusion thus arising is especially great in the southern hemisphere, where it has been intensified by the subdivision of one of the old constellations. The ancient constellation Argo covered so large a region of the heavens, and included so many conspicuous stars, that it was divided into four, representing various parts of a ship—the sail, the poop, the prow and the hull.
Dr. Gould, while director of the Cordoba Observatory, during the years 1870 to 1880, constructed the ‘Uranometria Argentina,’ in which all the stars visible to the naked eye more than 10 degrees south of the celestial equator were catalogued and mapped. He made a revision of the boundaries of each constellation in such a way as to introduce greater regularity. The rule generally followed was that the boundaries should, so far as possible, run in either an east and west or a north and south direction on the celestial sphere. They were so drawn that the smallest possible change should be made in the notation of the conspicuous stars; that is, the rule was that, if possible, each bright star should be in the same constellation as before. The question whether this new division shall replace the ancient one is one on which no consensus of view has yet been reached by astronomers. Simplicity is undoubtedly introduced by Gould’s arrangement; yet, in the course of time, owing to precession, the lines on the sphere which now run north and south or east and west will no longer do so, but will deviate almost to any extent. The only advantage then kept will be that the bounding lines will generally be arcs of great circles.
When the heavens began to be carefully studied, two or three centuries ago, new constellations were introduced by Hevelius and other astronomers to fill the vacant spaces left by the ancient ones of Ptolemy. To some of these, rather fantastic names were given; the Bull of Poniatowski, for example. Some of these new additions have been retained to the present time, but in other cases the space occupied by the proposed new constellation was filled up by extending the boundaries of the older ones.
At the present time the astronomical world, by common consent, recognizes eighty-nine constellations in the entire heavens. In this enumeration Argo is not counted, but its four subdivisions are taken as separate constellations.