AN ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERY.

Evening Star, Issue 18031, 27 July 1922, Page 4

AN ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERY.

The, claim of a Canadian to have discovered two new stellar bodies has an immense impressiveness for the layman when they are described as twin suns whirling round each other. Some of tho effect is likely to be- lost when they are called twin stars, which was the term- applied to them in a later message. It is only tho layman’s ignorance, however, that could cause his faculty of wonder to bo excited so much more by the first', description' than tho second, firms and stars are merely the same thing, and the poet was a' good astronomer who said l of this earth’s history t “ What is it all but a trouble of ante in tho gleam of a million million of sum?” Professor Biaskett’a discovery can bo understood! in its right proportions when wo read l that our own particular sun is a star, and “the solar system is but a little sub-system in the greater stellar universe. Indeed, it might bo said that.,the solar system stands ini the same relation to the stellar as the earth, moon, or Jovian systems to tho solar system itself.” Even in the discovery of twin stars, or suns, which are described) as revolving round each other, there is nothing peculiar. A considerable number of the stars are what are known as binaries or revolving double stars, in which both components revolve round their common centre of gravity. Many of these binaries are so close that they have been discovered only by means of the spectroscope as a result of tho duplication and shifting of the lines in the spectra. There are also triple and) quadruple stars,- and many of the stars or suns which are visible in the heavens, as well as others which are too distant to be visible, may be tho centres of systems of their own corresponding to our solar system. The real distinctiveness of Professor Plaskett’s now stare', or suns—if they are really new—would appear to lio in the surpassing size and brightness which have been calculated for them.