ORION THE HUNTER

Taranaki Daily News, 17 January 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

ORION THE HUNTER

A’MINE OF WONDERS

(Rev. B. Dudley,

F.R.A.S.)

■Thomas Carlyle used to express regret that he had not received some training in observational astronomy, that he was so deficient in a knowledge of the celestial scenery, and that therefore he was unable to trace the various starry groupings for himself. “Why did not somebody teach me the constellations and make me at home in the starry heavens which are always overhead and which J don’t half know to this day ?” he asked. Many people share his sentiment. On a night when the “Hunter,” one of the most magnificent of constellations, is in the field of view, “his limbs pricked out in sparkling gems,” and stretching his personality across the heavens, we feel ourselves pigmies i . the presence of a multitude of stars. In order to find him, take a sheet of paper and mark upon it five dots, suggestive of a St. Andrew’s Cross, or (in a pack of cards) the ly’e of diamonds. The middle point is his waist which can now be lengthened by the addition of two more dots, thus forming a slanting line, the downward tilt being at the left hand extremity. AbJve the whole, at a suitable distance, add another dp*- or — ones and very close together (as is actually the case in tho sky) for the head. All that is necessary now is to put in, below the slanting line of three stars forming the waistband, a sword-scab-bard, consisting of several star-dots pointing downwards. Here will be a rough sketch of the constellation of Orion. To see the group as it appears from New Zealand, however, it is essential to turn the whole picture upside down. ' , On the 17th of.the present month Orion will be due north, in this invented position, at 10 o’clock in the evening, and will be found occupying a large region of the heavens. The belt at the waist points obliquely to the somewhat ruddy star Aldebaran situated to the left or west of Orion, while to the right it points aloft to Sirius, the brightest of the “fixed” stars in the entire heavens. Manilius describes Orion in the following lines:— , First, next the Twins, see great Orion rise; His arms extended stretch o’er hair the skies. His stride as large, and with, a steady pace He marches on, and measures a vast space; On each broad shoulder a bright star displayed, . . And three obliquely grace his hanging 1 blade. In his vast head, immersed in boundless spheres .• > Three stars, less bright, but yet as great he bears, But farther off removed,'their, splendours lost; Thus giac’d and arm'd he leads the starry host.

The ancients pictured the mighty hunter as wielding an immense club in the right hand, while carrying a shield in his left. According to legend, Orion was born of Neptune and Queen Eurydale, an Amazonian huntress of wide fame. From his Brother he derived the daring spirit that made him the greatest of all hunters. Punishment was at length meted out to him for the terror he inspired in all rivals and enemies by Juno who commanded the scorpion to sting him. Forthwith, springing up out of the earth, this frightful monster inflicted upon him the wound, from which he, in anguish', died. By way of reward for obedience, Juno accorded the scorpion a place among the stars. ■ It is worth while noting the difference in tint between the stars Aldebaran and Betelgeux, the brightest member of the Orion group, the former, having a rosy hue, the latter an orange. Rigel, as the upper left hand corner as seen from New Zealand, is bluish?white; while Sirius, similar in colour, flashes with much ;the greater lustre, the gem of the star group known as Canis Major, or the Big Dog. The constellation has been described as a tnine of wonders. One —perhaps the chief—of these is “a tiny wisp of cloudlike stuff” which is infinitely more significant than it looks in a pair of binoculars which shows it to advantage, located in the sword. In reality it is a vast cloud of gaseous matter in the midst of which a number of suns are seen forming, though many centuries must elapse before they will have completed their evolution. The photographic plate shows what has been called, because of its resemblance to that strange nocturnal creature, a “ghostly bat flitting thioug the night.” .This wonderful wraith-hke object, broken. by the black bat, is in reality a mighty nebula, whose bulk exceeds that of our solar system many millions of times. Try to think what this-means, remembering that our system is itself several thousands of millions of miles across! Though we might carefully watch for years, it would be impossible for us to detect the leas change; yet this cloud, so enormous m size, is a seething mass of gaseous matter within which motions at the rate ot many miles a second are constantly taking place. In all probability, if we could look into the infinitely remote past we should see atoms of hydrogen and other gases gradually drawing together to form the vast cloud which we observe to-day, the particles colliding and blending with one another “like drops of water in a breaking ocean wave.” Looking on through the far vistas of the future, we should gaze on a wondrous cluster or stars, the final result of this turmoil, the systems of suns thus formed presenting a wonderful variety of gems, diileren in colour—all “stars just leaving thencradles of star-mist with gaseous, tendrils still clinging around, them, to quote from a recent description.. inib great cloud has already given birth to mighty stars like Betelgeux whose diameter, measured at Mount Wilson 0 servatory, is so that the Sun, ac~ companied by several of his planets wheeling round him at their present distances, could be contained within it. me nebula, then, is the parent of giant and dwarf suns, which live and move and have their being in its meshes, each working out a career as amazing as the solar system with which we are more familiar—as wonderful, indeed, as the tiny flower that grows beside our door.- For two things in the universe are equally marvellous —a star cluster, a hundred thousand light-years away and many light-yeai. across, and the tender daisy at our feet whose extended petals are less than an inch in diameter 1 erhaps, as Catherine Bates suggested the growth of the smallest flower and plant is a mystery which, if we couM u ” der ' stand, might open to us the doors o_ Universe.