STAR-GAZING.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 566, 2 December 1915, Page 3

STAR-GAZING.

THE LAUGHTER OF THE SPHERES [Written for THE BUN.] .We have been star-gazing, Mareia and I. For a long time we had cherished a mutual ambition to hook a planet or two out of the sky, so to speak, and examine them at close range, per telescope. Something always managed to come between us and the desire of our hearts, until, knowing that the observatory would soon be closed for the summer vacation, we emulated Mrs Dombey, and made an effort. In the first place, we set our faces determine'dly against anything that looked like an engagement for the particular night upon which we had fixed, and, in the second, we prevailed upon a friend to secure a cord of admission for us. A MATTER OF PRONUNCIATION. Armed with it, we s'ct off, Mareia informing me en route that her one j desire at'the present moment \yas 1 tty gaze upon Orion, because it had a beltX I don't know whether sfie thought she could copy it, and thus set a new fashion, and I forgot to ask her, for we immediately became absorbed in the correct pronunciation of the. word. "I," said Mareia," have always pronounced it 'O-rion,' but just recently I met a man who should have known the proper way, and he called it 'Or-ion/ If I should give the learned person in charge of the observatory the wrong pronunciation—which he probably would ostentatiously and immediately correct—f should die of shame. AVhat! would you do?" j '•'Chance it," I said, vaguely. | - "That," answered Mareia, unhap- j pily, "is just what I can't do. The 1 risk is too great. I think," bright-' tiling, "I think I shall ask, in a j breezy, you-know-what-Imean sort j of way, for "the gentleman with the ; belt." The man will then say 'O-rion?' 01* 'Or-ion?' as the case may be, and I shall say 4 Yes,' repeating the name of the planet after him in a confident, familiar manner.! That," she finished, beaming on me j in delight at her own cleverness, *'that is strategy, my dear." j By this time we had reached the 'college, and we entered the grounds and made our way to the tower. We ascended several short flights of narrow, dimly-lit stairs, and presently found ourselves in a small room, with an even dimmer light, and a huge telescope for chief occupant. A young man came out of the shadows and introduced us to the instrument. THE MARVEL' OF A DOUBLE STAR. Making a window by.sliding a slat back from the roof, he spoke a few simple, encouraging words to! the telescope, and adjusted it so that one end of it looked out at the aperture. Then he told 11s that we were about to see one of the "pointers"—a double star. Really, it was two stars, revolving round one another, but to Us it would look like two stars, set very close together. The telescope being tall, and Mareia and I short, we essayed to reach it by standing 011 a chair, but found that inadequate. The chair was thereupon supplemented by a box, and 011 this shaky foothold we -perched precariously, one at a time, and made acquaintance with our t first double star. That telescope, certainly brought il near. Only a very little more, it seemed to me, would have induced il to light 011 the rim of the projecting end, and say "How d'you do?" to 11s. What did it look like? Well', it, or, rather, they, for two separate, tlistjinct stars were plainly visible, were faint golden in the centre, luminous and beautiful, each surrounded with what looked like a circle of blue light, flickering and glowing, and' 4 throwing out little jets of flame like a glorified diamond. So close together they looked—it seemeji that there was hardly more than the thickness of a sixpence between Yet we were told that they were further from each other than from the earth. Then the telescope was swung round towards the western sky and the, imparter of star knowledge discovered Jupiter and showed him to us. A vast round disc, somewhat siU

very, a villi four adjacent moons visible. There are really more than " four—six, I think we were told—which looks rather as if Jupiter was extravagant in the matter of moons. Six is surely an over-plus for one planet. SIIIIUS, THE BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL. The bright particular star of the heavens, Sirius, swinging low in the eastern sky, next claimed bur attention. Sirius is the very brightest star of all —a twinkling, coruscating, roguish imp that lives up in the high spaces and out-sliines all its sisters. Oh, how it sparkled and pulsated and shone up there in its setting of deep sky! We asked how far away it was, for we developed a warm affection for Sirius, the bright and beautiful, and I think we would have liked 1 to know that it was within calling distance, as it were. The young man looked into the back of his head and negligently extracted a few figures. "Distance between Sirius and the earth?" he said. "Oh," casually, about two hundred million miles!" Two hundred million miles! It made us feel very small, very insignificant. It gave a new meaning to space. Marcia confided to the man thyt she could now appreciate the feelings of a snail, who, after creeping a few yards in a day, thought he had accomplished vast distances. The man nodded; he was an understanding soul. STUDENTS AND STARS. Then arrived on the scene a school ma'am with a drove of young stu-

dents, come to improve their minds by looking through the telescope. One by one they clambered up on the chair —and the box, too, if their j lack of inches warranted it—and one j jby one they twittered at «tlie stars. They swarmed out in the bit of balcony that accompanies the tower, I and picked out their favourite constellations and talked learnedly of them. The man listened respectfully land with immense interest. Plainly it broke ground new to him in the j world of stars. ! I knew the lady in charge, and Mareia whispered that now was my chance to find out the correct pronunciation of our friend with the, belt. T think she was getting doubt-j fill of the wisdom of her little strategic plan; after what we had seen and heard it seemed rather familiar i —disrespectful even —to speak of a I constellation as "the gentleman with j the belt." / | ! We were told that "O-rion was ( quite correct and so we made appli-j cation for the telescope to be directed Orion-wards. And in that particular constellation we saw a wonderful thing. A SUN IN THE MAKING. A vast, nebulous, vapoury tract, light and luminous, standing out distinctly from the deeper tint of the sky. This is a kind ot gaseous. formation, we learned, probably a i sun in the making. In the centre we j descried two or three bright, twink- j ling stars, and from their size and j position we got an idea of the iin- j mensity of the vapoury tract. Some ; of the students, who, perhaps, like' us, had pictured Orion as a single,: belted star, of imposing appearance, j something like a belted earl, maybe,. complained -that they could see nothing. This occasioned our star- j cicerone many ups and downs, he I would have to seek the chair eleva- j tion each time to peer through the j telescope, and discover whither Orion j had vanished. I am bound to say i that he invariably found the consfel- j latiop in the same place. j THE STAR THAT NEVER SETS. | Near Sirius was a stop-out star, j one, to be precise, that never set. Mareia, overcome by the intense attitude of the students, wickedly told one that she knew another star that never set. The maiden excitedly demanded the name. "The rooster," demurely said Mareia, pronouncing it "roo-star," this piece of startling information being received by the young star-! gazer with utter bewilderment, lowed by a deep' distrust of my friend. She kept out of the way of both of us for the rest of the evening, evidently being of the opinion that we were a couple of lunatics that had somehow eluded their keeper, and who, though harmless enough at the present moment, might at any timebecome violent and dolier a mischief. That, as I subsequently pointed out to Mareia, was just retribution for the making of bad puns, but Mareia said the look 011 the girl's face was well worth it. THE LOVELIEST SIGHT OF ALL. One of the loveliest sights we saw during the whole evening was a'vast cluster of stars, very white and tiny, and far away, massed so closely together that you could not see where one ended and another began. It looked as if you had taken a lot of big stars, pounded them into tiny fragments, and cast them into the sky. With the naked eye the cluster looked like a faint silver blur in the heavens. Millions and millions of stars — millions and millions of world's! Out on that little baleony, with the night wind sweeping over the city, and the dark outline of the hills clear against the pale, frosty sky, flippancy dropped from us like a garment, and solemn thoughts were born. Thoughts that 4 swept like great birds out into that vast, illimitable distance, and returned awed, impressed, reverent. Millions and millions of stars—millions and millions of worlds! And here, on our little planet, our one tiny speck in this immensity of space—here we plan, and plot, and struggle, and strive, pitting our puny powers against the force that regulates—this! We were very silent all the way home. When we reached our destination Mareia paused for a minute before going in, and turned her gaze starwards. "I expect they must often laugh at us," she said in a low voice. I nodded. "I expect they must," I answered as we went in. S.I.R.