Genesis of a New World.

Auckland Star, Volume XXI, Issue 4124, 22 September 1883, Page 6 (Supplement)

Genesis of a New World.

On a beautiful summer's night, August 22, 1794, Jerome and Lefrancais do Lalaudc noticed a star in Aquarius, which they estimated of the 71 magnitude. Six yoars later thoy thought of the S magnitnde. In appearance it resembles a star which is not exactly in the focus of the telescope. Herschel had observed it in September, 1782, and recorded it as an admirable planetary nebula, very brilliant, small, and elliptical. Loid Cosso and Laselle perceived that it was surrounded by a ring, which gives it Blmewhat the appearance of Saturn. Tho spectrosccpic observation of Huggins indicate that it is a gaseous mass in which nitrogen and hydrogen predominate. Most of the other planetary and annual nebuliu give similar results. In 1871 and 1572, Brunnow, the Irish Astronomer Royal, measured its parallax and concluded that its distance is more than 404,000 times as great as that of the sun, and its diameter is probably greater than that of the entire solar system. This ■would make its volume more than 335,89G,500,000,000 times as groat as that of tho earth. Wo have thus before our eyes a new system, which is probably undergoing tho process of condensation through ■which our sun and its attendant planets passed hundreds of millions of years ago.— *'L'Astrononrie."