MARVELS OF THE UNIVERSE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue LXVIII, 27 June 1912, Page 3

MARVELS OF THE UNIVERSE.

The little group of scientists who are watching nightly on the summit of Mount Wilson, in California, are being enthralled by a vision of forming worlas and the birth of a Jiew astral system in space, according to the reports fust received by Professor David P. lodd, or the Amberst College Observatory (says London Standard). A thousand million times greater than our own solar systhe New York correspondent of the tern, a vast celestial system seems to be taking form out of murky nebulae. A photograph of the mighty event —one of the mosL remarkable ever made— has been prepared by Dr Edward A. Fath, the leader of the party, with the aid of a huge 60in reflector. The picture shows the spiral nebulae apparently in the act of crystallising into new suns. "The announcement reads as if it were genuine," said Professor Todd on receipt of the news. "I hope that later despatches fully verify it, for it demonstrates a thing that has long been contended for among astronomers. That is, that we should have telescopes of a much larger size than any now in operation. We have understood for many years that our own solar system was not the only pebble on the solar beach. What is described as having been discovered is just what, according to our theories, may ocgui- at any time and in any part of the heavens. The most remarkable thing is that the process of star formation seems to hay,e been oaught at the moment of beginning its change from the nebulous state. Nothing like that has ever occurred before in the history of astionomy. It is only by a long and slovy process that the nebulous gases of the heavens become the fixed light points which we know as stars, but it is not at all remarkable that a whole system should begin to crystallise out of the gases at one time/