SCIENCE UP TO DATE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17394, 3 February 1917, Page 13

SCIENCE UP TO DATE.

AMONG THE CONSTELLATIONS. (By JAMES COLLIER.) A flight through infinite space would tell us less about the constellations than wo can learn from an . inspection of the nightly skies. Little though they may resemble their mythical appellations, these have a story to relate of the wanderings of man s mind in the first stupendous playground of the imagination. Nor is that playground yet closed. In recent times astronomers who well knew tho science of their subject have not been deterred from shaping new colossal forms in tho flocks of the sky. If they add nothing to our knowledge they contribute a good deal to our familiarity, and that is always helpful. It may lead to profounder studies and reveal greater wonders. THE CHARIOTEER, Auriga, the Charioteer, deserves a, place in rihese notes, if only because of the first-magnitude star Capella. Its origin is unknown. Richard Allen concludes that it originated on tho Euphrates, and in much the same form as it now appears to us. It has always been figured as a mighty man seated on the Milky Way, carrying a goat on his shoulder and holding two kids in his hand. In the heart of the goat blazes Gapella. This star is famous in all history. The Arabs called it the Driver, because it appeared in tho evening earlier than other stars, and seemed to bo driving them on. It is nearest to the North Pole of all stars of .the first magnitude, and therefore it cannot be seen in our hemisphere. Evidently we miss a splendid sight. It seems to announce the coming of a mighty host and is the worthy leader of the stellar pageant. As the heart of the goat in the constellation, it war, worshipped by the Hindus as the heart of Brahma. The Peruvians and tho English always connected it with the affairs of shepherds, because it. culminated at the time when shepherds watched their flocks by night. In Tennyson, who sings of it as a "glorious crown," the myth has disappeared. It figures in an old Akkadian tablet as " the star of stars/' and this is the oldest allusion to Sapella that is extant 1 .- It was au important star in the templeworship of Ptah, which was oriented according to the place of its setting. The temple of Ptah, at Memphis, was also oriented in the same direction. And Sir N. Lockyer believes that three other Egyptian temples were so oriented.

In brightness Capella ranks third in magnitude in the Northern Hemisphere, but only fifth of all the stars in the firmament. Its mass is eighteen times larger than the nun and has a like spectrum! Its parallax, or distance from the earth, is about thirty-four light years. Unlike other stars already mentioned, it is rfceding at the rate of 15 miles a second. It is another spectrum binary, and a close one; the two are separated from one another by only seven and a half million miles. Tts unseen companion has a spectrum resembling that of Proeyon, and it is more developed than its lucid companion-star. ' They are two virtually equal stars. The star Beta is receding at the rate of 17 miles a second. Auriga, we mnv add. is rich in star clusters, as is plain on the map. One of them is a magnificent object, and the group is resoluble into cCO stars. There more than anywhere else is "the floor of heaven inlaid with patinrs of bright gold." THE CHAINED LADY. As Prometheus was chained to a rock in th& CSiucasus for arrogating to himself the powers of Zeus, so Andromeda, daughter of Cassopeia, was chained to a sea-swept rock, there to wait till the sea monster sent- by Neptune to devour her should arrive. It was one of the many legends or myths .in which the Greeks embodied the notion of sacrifice and the necessity for it. The belief that the innocent suffer for the guilty is at the base of all religions. Andromeda had not sinned, but her mother, Cassiopeia, had unpardonably offended' the god of the seas by boasting of her superiority in beauty to the daughters of the sea, Neptune's children. The old star atlases and the new differ somewhat in their deliberation of the figure. In the older ones the maiden is chained to a rock, and the Whivle lies near at hand. In modern atlases, such as Burritt's, she has chains attached to her wrists and ankles, but the rock does not appear. In the Alphonsine tables Andromeda an unfastened chain round her body, one fish on her bosom and another at her feet. The constellation had been conceived to run into the Pisces. The Leyden Manuscript represents a somewhat different figure. There she lies, partly clothed, on the bench, chained to rocks on both sides, On a. map printed in Venice in 1438 she is shown as bound by the wrists between two trees.

Mythology took up the typical conception and made "of it a striking figure, or set of such.. Hearing of the plight of the distressed maiden, Perseus, fresh from his conquest of Medusa, and with her head in his hand, a ; sailed the sea monster, turned it to stone, and delivered the damselThe constellations, Pegasus and Perseus, being near Andromeda, connect the three. The constellations came out of the myth, we may believe, not the myth out of the constellations. Y'et the placing of Perseus on his horse there arose doubtless from the neighbourhood of Pegasus. Tho conjunction does not appear in the myth. The mythologists perceive in it another form of the universal solar myth. But ancient solar mythology \s often mere modern moonshine. The Hindus have tho same myth in their mythology, with almost the same namo and much the same story. It had a vide distribution. The poets havo feasted on it. Sappho has adorned one of her lyrics with her name, and Sophocles and Euripides composed dramas that had Andromeda for their subject. Milton has a stately reference to " The fleecy star that bears Andromeda far off Atlantic seas," and Charles Kingsley's cantering hexameters are finely descriptive of the constellation. Then came tho day of rationalism. Andromeda was a symbol of a geographical situation. Jerusalem was a " daughter of Sion," that is, a daughter of the rugged hills that surround the city. The long coast of Palestine was the daughter of Cepheus and Ca> siope. In Phoenician a long coast or a long chain of mountains would be called Andromeda. Then, Palestine would have been destroyed hut for aid received from the ships that came bringing provisions. The Medusa's head was the figure of a horse on the stern of these ships. Lastly, in the. " vulgar" tongue, a ship was called Perseus, a runner or horseman. Out of these elements we might weave the story of Andromeda. In the time of Josephus the inhabitants of Joppa showed tli« links of her chain and the bones of the sea. monster. The most prominent feature of the constellation is tho " Queen of the Nebuke," known as far back as 905 A.D., and the only xnefcula visible to the .naked oye. In 1848 the nebula was resolved" at Cambridge into 1500 minute stars. It. is a highly condensed cluster of stars. The Bielid meteors of November radiate from this

ORION THE HUNTSMAN

The vast constellation of the Giant Hunter is universally admitted to be tho most, brilliant of the constellations, and it is probably the best known. Tho authorities tell us, as usual, that it was first discovered and named in the valley of the Euphrates, According to a sober authority, Miss Gierke, Orion was a variant of Adonis, and its worship was imported into Greece at an oaily date. Presumably, the constellation was derived •from tho Akkadians. Hindu, Greek and Roman, Egyptian, Hebrew, Chinese and Syrian, Arabian, Irish and Eskimo mythology abounds in myths relating to tho constellation.

They might well. The skies present no grander display. It is incomparably the most, brilliant of the. constellations, and it is visible in a.ll parts of both the northern and the southern hemispheres, Eiammarion calls it the California oi the heavens, so rich is it m Lelescopie objects of interest. It kindles observers into poetry. Its rising is a gorgeous sight. Jewel after jewel emerges until tho whole splendid figure stands out before us. So closely and so symmetrically are the bright stars clustered as to form "a set figure of dazzling jewels, a veritable, sunburst of diamonds in the sky." Tho individual stars are decplv interesting. The three " belt stars " are of the second magnitude, and two others are of the first. Another, Sigma Orionis, is " a glorious multiple star, possibly the finest of its type." The telescope, as if by the wand of a magician, multiplies it into eight or ten stars, and these are very variously beautiful. The Great Nebula i& dazzling. Its mass is said to be four and a half million times that of our snn. " Nowhere else," says Serviss, is the architecture of a nebula so clearly displayed. It is nn»unfinished temple "of gigantic dimensions. The work of evolution is still proceeding. Stars lie complete, like dropped gems, newly made, and " around them are masses, eddies, currents and swirls of nebulous matter " on their way to being evolved. • So luminous a constellation demands little explanation. The mighty Hunter stands in a threatening attitude facing the advancing Bull.. He is trampling on a timid hare and pursuing a fleck of doves. Three stars are locafcd in his vast head, and the. Sword hangs pendant from the Belt, The hare crouches beneath the Hunter's foot.

In reality, we see the figure upside down. A parallelogram is formed by three bright stars and one moderately bright star. These four stai'3 make up the shoulders and the knees of, the Huntsman. One of them, Rigel, answers to the left knee, if wc should not rather say, fool, because tho older charts show the leg drawn up, possibly, it is .suggested, to keep it out of the way of the Hare, on which ho is almost treading. The star, Betelgetise, stands for the right shoulder. Gamma Orionis, to the left of Betelgcuse.' stands for the left shoulder. And Kappa Orionis, a rather small star, represents the right knee. A small group of stars between the two shoulders stands for the vast head. A massive club, by a stretch of imagination, has been placed in the right hand of Orion. Arm. hand and club extend in a right curve downwards, and .there also is tho tip of the Bull's horn which the Huntsman is going to attack. A small vertical row of perfectly distinct stars forms the sword. On his left arm, or rather depending from it, is a. lion's skin, which the Giant uses as a shield to defend himself against the Bull's onslaught. A row of small stars hang in a vertical curve between tho left shoulder of the Huntsman and the Bull's bead. Altogether, over 100 stars combine, or are made to combine, to form the maiestic figure of the Hunter, and of these four'are of the second magnitude and 'tavo of the first. Orion's Belt is unique in the sky, and the stars composing it are almost) exact!v separated by "no degree from one another. For this reason the Belt is known as the Celestial Yardstick. His sword consists of three stars in a row, but when seen through a glass each of the stars is nebulous and multipie, and the whole field, says Professor Cooke, of Sydney "is covered with twinkling points of light," Close at hand is the grandest irregular nebula in tho sky. Of the two first-magni-tude stars we need only say that Rigel is in all the freshness and fiery glow o'f vouth, while Betelgeuse has traversed his fiery youth and is settling down into stellar decrepit'ado. Both are of enormous dimensions, and both are increasing their immeasurable distance from this earth.