Garrett Putman Serviss

“ Although, as a constellation, it is not to be compared with the brilliant Orion, yet, on account of the unrivaled magnificence of its chief star, Canis Major presents almost as attractive a scene as its more extensive rival. Everybody has heard of Sirius, or the Dog-Star, and everybody must have seen it flashing and scintillating so splendidly in the winter heavens, that to call it a first-magnitude star does it injustice, since no other star of that magnitude is at all comparable with it. Sirius, in fact, stands in a class by itself as the brightest star in the sky. ”

“ It is an interesting fact that the summer solstice, or the point which the sun occupies when it attains its greatest northerly declination, on the longest day of the year, is close by this great cluster in Gemini. In the glare of the sunshine those swarming stars are then concealed from our sight, but with the mind's eye we can look past and beyond our sun, across the incomprehensible chasm of space, and behold them still shining, their commingled rays making our great God of Day seem but a lonely wanderer in the expanse of the universe. ”

“ Many of the mountains of the moon are, foot for foot, as lofty as the highest mountains on the earth, while all of them, in proportion to the size of the moon's globe, are much larger than the earth's mountains. It is obvious, then, that the sunshine, as it creeps over these Alpine landscapes in the moon, casting the black shadows of the peaks and craters many miles across the plains, and capping the summits of lofty mountains with light, while the lower regions far around them are yet buried in night, must clearly reveal the character of the lunar surface. ”

“ In glancing from side to side of the sun's disk, the eye ranges over a distance of more than 860,000 miles—not a mere ideal distance, or an expanse of empty space, but a distance filled by an actual and, so to speak, tangible body, whose diameter is of that stupendous magnitude. One sees at a glance, then, the enormous scale on which these spots are formed. The earth placed beside them would be but a speck, and yet they are mere pits in the surface of the sun, filled perhaps with partially cooled metallic vapors, which have been cast up from the interior, and are settling back again. ”

“ Now, if you have a powerful field-glass, here is an opportunity to view one of the prettiest sights in the heavens. The field-glass not only makes the two stars appear brighter, and their colors more pronounced, but it shows a third, fainter star below them, making a small triangle, and brings other still fainter stars into sight, while the nebulous speck above turns into a charmingly beautiful little star-cluster, whose components are so close that their rays are inextricably mingled in a maze of light. ”

“ Taurus has the tips of his horns dipped in the great stream; it flows between the shining feet of Gemini and the head and shoulders of Orion as between starry banks; the peerless Sirius hangs like a gem pendent from the celestial girdle. In the southern hemisphere we should find the beautiful constellation of the ship Argo, containing Canopus, sailing along the Milky-Way, blown by the breath of old romance on an endless voyage; the Southern Cross glitters in the very center of the galaxy ”

“ The plane of the orbit of his planet being supposed to pass through the center of the spherical system, our observer would, during his year, behold the night at one season blazing with the splendors of the clustered suns, and at another emptied of brilliant orbs and faintly lighted with the soft glow of the Milky-Way and the feeble flickering of distant stars, scattered over the dark vault. ”

“ In the pure frosty air the stars seem splintered and multiplied indefinitely, and the brighter ones shine with a splendor of light and color unknown to the denizen of the smoky city, whose eyes are dulled and blinded by the glare of streetlights. There one may detect the delicate shade of green that lurks in the imperial blaze of Sirius, the beautiful rose-red light of Aldebaran, the rich orange hue of Betelgeuse, the blue-white radiance of Rigel, and the pearly luster of Capella. ”

“ It is a tough problem in selenography to account for these streaks. They are best seen at full moon. They can not be seen at all until the sun has risen to a certain elevation above them, 25° according to Neison; but, when they once become visible, they dominate everything. They turn aside for neither mountains nor plains, but pass straight on their courses over the ruggedest regions of the moon, retaining their brilliancy undiminished, and pouring back such a flood of reflected light that they completely conceal some of the most stupendous mountain-masses across which they lie. ”

“ It marks the hand in which Perseus clasps his diamond sword, and, with a telescope of medium power, it is one of the most marvelously beautiful objects in the sky—a double swarm of stars, bright enough to be clearly distinguished from one another, and yet so numerous as to dazzle the eye with their lively beams. An opera-glass does not possess sufficient power to "resolve" this cluster, but it gives a startling suggestion of its half-hidden magnificence, and the observer will be likely to turn to it again and again with increasing admiration. ”

“ Only about three thousand stars are visible to our unassisted eyes at once on any clear night, and of those only a few are conspicuous, and two thirds are so faint that they require some attention in order to be distinguished. But the spectator at the center of the Hercules cluster would behold some seven thousand stars at once, the faintest of which would be five times as brilliant as the brightest star in our sky, while the brighter ones would blaze like nearing suns. One effect of this flood of starlight would be to shut out from our observer's eyes all the stars of the outside universe. ”

“ And as Venus glowed with increasing splendor in the serene evenings of June, she continued to be mistaken for some petty artificial light instead of the magnificent world that she was, sparkling out there in the sunshine like a globe of burnished silver. Yet Venus as an evening star is not so rare a phenomenon that people of intelligence should be surprised at it. ”

“ But, alas! as the powers of the telescope increased, the vision of a moon crowded with life faded, until at last the cold fact struck home that the moon is, in all probability, a frozen and dried-up globe, a mere planetary skeleton, which could no more support life than the Humboldt glacier could grow roses. And yet this opinion may go too far. There is reason for thinking that the moon is not absolutely airless, and, while it has no visible bodies of water, its soil may, after all, not be entirely arid and desiccated. ”

“ We have only to recall the splendors of a night that is lighted by a full moon, and then to recollect that at new or old moon the earth is "full" as seen from our satellite, and that a full earth must give some fourteen times as much light as a full moon, in order to realize the brilliancy of an earth-lit night upon the moon. As the moon waxes to us, the earth wanes to the moon, and vice versa, and so the phenomenon of earth-shine on the lunar surface must be looked for before the first quarter and after the last quarter of the moon. ”

“ Probably much of the impressiveness of the spectacle is owing to the knowledge that those little points of light, shining now in a row and now in a cluster, are actually, at every instant, under the government of their giant neighbor and master, and that as we look upon them, obediently making their circuits about him, never venturing beyond a certain distance away, we behold a type of that gravitational mastery to which our own little planet is subject as it revolves around its still greater ruler, the sun, to whose control even Jupiter in his turn must submit. ”

“ I have more than once heard persons who knew nothing about the stars, and probably cared less, utter exclamations of surprise and delight when persuaded to look at certain parts of the sky with a good glass, and thereafter manifest an interest in astronomy of which they would formerly have believed themselves incapable.
Being convinced that whoever will survey the heavens with a good opera-glass will feel repaid many fold for his time and labor, I have undertaken to point out some of the objects most worthy of attention, and some of the means of making acquaintance with the stars. ”

“ But, however clearly one may imagine that he discerns a man in the moon while recalling the nursery-rhymes about him, an opera-glass instantly puts the specter to flight, and shows the round lunar disk diversified and shaded like a map. ”

“ Look toward the edge of the field of view, while the object you are seeking is in the center, and then, if it can be seen at all with your glass, you will catch sight of it, as it were, out of the corner of your eye. The effect of seeing a faint star in this way, in the neighborhood of a large one, whose rays hide it from direct vision, is sometimes very amusing. The little star seems to dart out into view as through a curtain, perfectly distinct, though as immeasurably minute as the point of a needle. ”

“ We might even go so far as to say that possibly Mira presents to us an example of what our sun will be in the course of time, as the dead and barren moon shows us, as in a magician's glass, the approaching fate of the earth. ”

“ It is certainly true that a contemplation of the unthinkable vastness of the universe, in the midst of which we dwell upon a speck illuminated by a spark, is calculated to make all terrestrial affairs appear contemptibly insignificant. We can not wonder that men for ages regarded the earth as the center, and the heavens with their lights as tributary to it, for to have thought otherwise, in those times, would have been to see things from the point of view of a superior intelligence. ”

“ As an offset to the discomforts of winter observations of the stars, the observer finds that the softer skies of summer have no such marvelous brilliants to dazzle his eyes as those that illumine the hyemal heavens. To comprehend the real glories of the celestial sphere in the depth of winter one should spend a few clear nights in the rural districts of New York or New England, when the hills, clad with sparkling blankets of crusted snow, reflect the glitter of the living sky. ”

“ It is worth anybody's while to get a glimpse at a sun-spot if he can, for, although he may see it merely as a black dot on the shining disk, yet it represents the play of physical forces whose might and power are there exercised on a scale really beyond human comprehension. The imagination of Milton or Dante would have beheld the mouth of hell yawning in a sun-spot. ”

“ In the mean time, let us follow the bending row of stars from Antares toward the south and east. When you reach the star Mu (μ) , you are not unlikely to stop with an exclamation of admiration, for the glass will separate it into two stars that, shining side by side, seem trying to rival each other in brightness. But the next star below μ, marked Zeta (ζ) , is even more beautiful. It also separates into two stars, one being reddish and the other bluish in color. The contrast in a clear night is very pleasing. But this is not all. Above the two stars you will notice a curious nebulous speck. ”

“ The first glimpse we get of the hero of the sky is the long bending row of little stars that glitter in the lion's skin which, according to mythology, serves him for a shield. The great constellation then advances majestically into sight. First of its principal stars appears Bellatrix in the left shoulder; then the little group forming the head, followed closely by the splendid Betelgeuse, "the martial star," flashing like a decoration upon the hero's right shoulder. Then come into view the equally beautiful Rigel in the left foot, and the striking row of three bright stars forming the Belt. ”

“ But the popular ignorance of Venus, and the other members of the planetary family to which our mother, the Earth, belongs, is only an index of the denser ignorance concerning the stars—the brothers of our great father, the Sun. I believe this ignorance is largely due to mere indifference, which, in its turn, arises from a false and pedantic method of presenting astronomy as a creature of mathematical formulæ, and a humble handmaiden of the art of navigation. I do not, of course, mean to cast doubt upon the scientific value of technical work in astronomy. The science could not exist without it. ”

“ And of course they know nothing of the intellectual pleasure that accompanies a knowledge of the stars. Modern astronomy is so rapidly and wonderfully linking the earth and the sun together, with all the orbs of space, in the bonds of close physical relationship, that a person of education and general intelligence can offer no valid excuse for not knowing where to look for Sirius or Aldebaran, or the Orion nebula, or the planet Jupiter. ”

“ The observer must keep in mind the fact that he is looking straight down upon the tops of the lunar mountains. It is like a view from a balloon, only at a vastly greater height than any balloon has ever attained. Even with a powerful telescope the observer sees the moon at an apparent distance of several hundred miles, while with a field-glass, magnifying seven diameters, the moon appears as if thirty-five thousand miles off. ”

“ But as observations on the companion of Sirius show that Sirius's mass is fully twenty times the sun's, and since the character of Sirius's spectrum indicates that its intrinsic brightness, surface for surface, is much superior to the sun's, it is probable that our estimate of the star's actual brilliancy, as compared with what the sun would possess at the same distance, viz., seventy-two times, is much nearer the truth. It is evident that life would be insupportable upon the earth if it were placed as near to Sirius as it is to the sun. ”

“ It is not a true nebula, but a closely compacted cluster of [35] stars. With the opera-glass, if you are looking in a clear and moonless night, you will see it as a curious nebulous speck. With a field-glass its real nature is more apparent, and it is seen to blaze brighter toward the center. It is, in fact, one of those universes within the universe where thousands of suns are associated together by some unknown law of aggregation into assemblages of whose splendor the slight view that we can get gives us but the faintest conception. ”