Page:St. Nicholas, vol. 40.1 (1912-1913).djvu/537

A BEAUTIFUL FEBRUARY CONSTELLATION

You can easily find this group of stars in the sky if you face the south, turn a little toward the east, and then look up. You will see first a V-shaped figure with a bright reddish star at one end of the V. This is called Aldebaran, and is imagined to be the eye of the Bull. The two left-hand stars joined to the V in the map are the tips of his horns.

The group of stars close together on the right is called the Pleiades. Six stars can easily be seen
MAP OF TAURUS, THE BULL. in this group, but, on a very clear night, four more can be seen if you have good eyesight. Directly underneath the Pleiades can be seen the planet Saturn. To the eye, this appears like a star, but viewed with a telescope, it will show a round globe surrounded by a ring seen somewhat aslant.—Caroline E. Furness, Professor of Astronomy, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N. Y.

SATURN AND THE PLEIADES

“The drawing shows the planet Saturn, which is now shining in the constellation Taurus—the Bull—as a bright yellowish star, between the Hyades and the Pleiades.
A DRAWING OF SATURN.
Made by the aid of the Great Telescope of the Yerkes Observatory, by E. E. Barnard.

“Saturn is a great globe some 76,000 miles in diameter, and encircled by thin, broad rings 170,000 miles in diameter. Many considerations tell us that these rings are made up of myriads of bodies so minute and so distant that they cannot be seen individually with any telescope.

“The planet and rings shine by reflecting the light of the sun to us. Though they form immense circles, the rings arc never opened wider than shown in the drawing, which closely represents the appearance of the planet at the present time. Every fifteen years these rings are presented to us on edge, and they are then too thin to be seen from the earth, and the planet appears for a day or two shorn of its beautiful appendages. This occurred last in 1907.

“The distance of Saturn from us on February 1, 1913, will be 841,000,000 miles.
PHOTOGRAPH OF THE PLEIADES.
Made with the ten-inch lens of the Bruce Photographic Telescope of the Yerkes Observatory, by E. E. Barnard Exposure three hours, forty-eight minutes.

“As will be seen by the photograph, the principle stars of the Pleiades are involved in dense gaseous matter, called nebulosity, which fills the entire cluster with wispy, shredded patches and masses of light.

“The entire cluster is slowly drifting across the sky toward the south and east. We say slowly, because it takes some years of careful observation to detect this movement, but the real motion must be at least many miles a second.”—Edward Emerson Barnard, Astronomer of the Yerkes Observatory, University of Chicago.

Vol. XL.—47.