On June 6th Mars and Uranus were in conjunction, and their position, as well as that of the same set of three stars, is shown in the third cut. It will be seen that while Mars had changed its place very much more than Uranus, yet that the latter planet had now moved so far from its original position on May 29th, that there could be no possibility that the merest tyro in star-gazing would fail to notice the change. Whenever the observer sees an object which he suspects to be a planet, he can satisfy himself of its identity by making a series of little sketches like the above, showing the position of the suspected object on successive evenings, with respect to neighboring stars. The same plan suffices to identify the larger planets, in the case of which no glass is necessary. The observer can simply make a careful estimate by the naked eye of the supposed planet's distance and bearing from large stars near it, and compare them with similar observations made on subsequent evenings. THE SUN.--That spots upon the sun may be seen with no greater optical aid than that of an opera-glass is perhaps well known to many of my readers, for during the past ten years public attention has been drawn to sun-spots in an especial manner, on account of their supposed connection with meteorology, and in that time there have been many spots upon the solar disk which could not only be seen with an opera-glass, but even with the unassisted eye. At present (1888) we are near a minimum period of sun-spots, and the number to be seen even with a telescope is comparatively very small, yet only a few days before this page was written there was a spot on the sun large enough to be conspicuous with the aid of a field-glass. During the time of a spot-maximum the sun is occasionally a wonderful object, no matter how small the power of the instrument used in viewing it may be. Strings of spots of every variety of shape sometimes extend completely across the disk. Our illustration shows the appearance of the sun, as drawn by the author on the 1st of September, 1883. Every one of the spots and spot-groups there represented could be seen with a good field-glass, and nearly all of them with an opera-glass. [Illustration: THE SUN, SEPTEMBER 1, 1883.]