SKY’S DARK PATCHES

Evening Star, Issue 17880, 28 January 1922, Page 4

SKY’S DARK PATCHES

CLOUDS OF PRIMEVAL MATTER. On an exceptionally clear, starry night in England and moro_ commonly further .smith, one cannot fail to notice tho patchiness of tho stars, and ilm thicker tho stars visible, the greater the patchiness. Here and there, between tho two branches of the Milky Yay especially, there nro dark regions entirely void of stars and lacking in Inn faint luminosity of tho rest of the Milky Way, They suggest rents in a white gamso, holes through see tho background of tho void . Tho hotter our vision tho more conspicuous those holes become. Only faintly discernible to the naked eye, tho telescope brings out sharply tho contrast between, tho regions whero the stars are thick and tho patches, whero apparently then? are none, and the camera, v huh by its power of- accumulating impressions, can record laint stars that on on tho telescope cannot see, shows that those dark patches are really dark. Tho camera- Ims now also proved tee long unsuspected truth about tho nature of these patches. They are not “holes,” regions void of stars, hut clouds of matter between ns and tho Milky Way, Molting out from our view stars behind them, and themselves lightless. Photographs have been secured of a groat spiral nehuio, itself like a small luminous cloud, cut in half hv tho edge of a dark cloud. And this obscuration proves further that the clouds are clonus of solid .matter; ir they were composed of mat lor m gaseous form they would not always obscure tho stars behind them. They arc of an immense sine, immensely hi"ger than the largest, sun, and covering an area many times greater than the largest nebula of luminous gas. Thev cannot he atmospheric clouds or <l,o'kind known lo us. They must apparently be clouds of fine cosmic dust, perhaps' incomparably less substantial limn the thinnest earth fog, but by their enormous extent interposing between us and the starry background enough matter to veil tho latter comAs to their size, the Dutch astronormV Pannekook, calculates that the dark cloud in Taurus is 200 light years ] o ng—l,soo times as long as tho distance between tho earth and tho sun. Whether they arc tho results of tho disintegration of stellar universes, or the primeval matter out of which stellar universes are formed) there is no knowing.—‘ Everyday Science. *