The New Star, Nova.

Golden Bay Argus, Volume VII, Issue 68, 19 September 1901, Page 3

The New Star, Nova.

Interesting Communications Read. At a recent meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society several interesting communications upon the new star in Perseus were read. A photograph of the region, containing stars as faint as the 12th magnitude, taken by Mr. Stanley Williams on February 20, only twenty-eight hours before the Nova was first seen, showed no trace of it. Dr. Lockyer and Mr. McClean exhibited very fine photographs of its spectrum, which shows dark hydrogen absorption lines, and also broad bright bands of hydrogen, displaced towards the red end. This appears to point to the existence in the new star of two sources of light, having an enormous relative motion in the line of sight. The South Kensington photographs showed the spectrum compared with that of Alpha Pei-sei and Alpha Cygni, the latter of which it much resembled. .Mr. McClean pointed out that thero seems no trace of helium in the Nova, which he considered of the- same type as Sirius, but with bright bands due to hydrogen. Photographs of the spectrum had also been taken at Stonyhurst Observatory, and Mr. Newell explained the photographs of the details of the spectrum taken at Cambridge. The Astronomer Royal exhibited photographs of the Nova and surrounding stars, taken for position at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, where observations were also made of the changes in magnitude, showing a gradual, but not quite regular, diminution in the light of the new star from February 25 to March 6.

A Remarkable Genealogy. Descended from Charles f. and Cromwell.

At Hatfield there hangs on the grand staircase a curious portrait. It represents one of the Cecils, the fourth Earl of Salisbury. It was discovered when cleaning this picture that the canvas originally displayed a portrait of the Duke of Monmouth, over which the Cecil portrait was painted. This Duke of Monmouth was the illegitimate son of Charles 11. by a Welsh girl named Lucy Waters, and grandfather of the second Duke of Buccleuch. And now for a singular fact. By the marriage of Lord Walter Scott, brother of the present Duke of Buccleuch, with a daughter of the la>e Sir W. E. Cradock Hartopp, Bart, (whose ancestor Sir John Hartopp, M.P. for the county of Leicester, married Elizabeth, daughter of General Fleetwood, the celebrated Parliamentary commander), the children of his lordship are equally descended from Charles I. and Oliver Cromwell. Mrs. Fleetwood, Lady Hartopp's mother, was a daughter of "Old Noll," and previous to her marriage with General Fleetwood was the wife of the no less distinguished General Ireton. A New Disease—" Opsomania." Much sympathy is often evoked by accounts of cases of dipsomania, kleptomania, etc., but compassion is now demanded (says " Science Sittings) for a new form of malady, which has lately been classified as a distinct disease, and dignified with the high sounding title "Opsomania," which is nothing more nor less thun an inordinate craving for food, but especially confectionery. It has, of course, long been known that excessive indulgence in sweet things was detrimental to health ; but the appetite for such substances was regarded as within the control of the individual. It is now, however, asserted that the "opsomania©," when under the domination of the craving for sweets, is as little responsible for his actions as the confirmed inebriate. "Opsomania" is not likely to prove of much value as a defence when the youthful enthusiast is caught at the jam-jar. The Original " Dead Heads." We suppose everyone knows that the person who goes to a theatre with a free ticket is styled a "dead head" by the management. In the museum at Naples there is a case of theatrical "tickets" found in a tragic theatre in Pompeii. They were made variously in bone, ivory, and metal. To this day the gallery of an Italian theatre is called the pigeon-loft. Well, the little tickets for this part of the auditorium were in the shape of pigeons, while varying devices were used for other parts of the house. Among them was a set of diminutive skulls modelled in ivory. These were used solely for those having the right of free admission. Does this not suggest the very possible derivation of the modern "dead head?" The Sun Shrinking Daily. • In the course of a lecture recently at the Royal Institution, London, Sir Robert Ball said the sun was getting smaller every day. The sun is nine inches smaller to-day than it was yesterday, and the contraction is continually going on. There was no reason, however, for alarm, although the sun twenty years hence would have shrunk a mile. At the beginning of this century the sun was five miles bigger, and at the beginning of the Christian era one hundred miles bigger, than it is to-day. The diameter of the sun is 860,000 miles, and 40,000 years hence the sun will have lost 2,000 miles. But it will look exactly the same 40,000 years hence as it does to-day. A Sinecure.—" The job that would just suit me," said a man who admitted that he was born lazy, " is that of a lineman to a wireless telegraph company." He then tried to laugh, but the task was too fatiguing.