Astronomy with an Opera-glass: A Popular Introduction to the Study of the Starry Heavens with the Simplest of Optical InstrumentsServiss, Garrett Putman
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Astronomy with an Opera-glass: A Popular Introduction to the Study of the Starry Heavens with the Simplest of Optical Instruments
Serviss, Garrett Putman
Astronomy
The clusters we have just been looking at lie on the borders of Scorpio
and Sagittarius. Let us cross over into the latter constellation, which
commemorates the centaur Chiron. We are now in another, and even a
richer, region of wonders. The Milky-Way, streaming down out of the
northeast, pours, in a luminous flood, through Sagittarius, inundating
that whole region of the heavens with seeming deeps and shallows, and
finally bursting the barriers of the horizon disappears, only to glow
with redoubled splendor in the southern hemisphere. The stars Zeta
([zeta]), Tau ([tau]), Sigma ([sigma]), Phi ([phi]), Lambda ([lambda]),
and Mu ([mu]) indicate the outlines of a figure sometimes called the
Milk-Dipper, which is very evident when the eye has once recognized it.
On either side of the upturned handle of this dipper-like figure lie
some of the most interesting objects in the sky. Let us take the star
[mu] for a starting-point. Sweep downward and to the right a little
way, and you will be startled by a most singular phenomenon that has
suddenly made its appearance in the field of view of your glass. You
may, perhaps, be tempted to congratulate yourself on having got ahead of
all the astronomers, and discovered a comet. It is really a combination
of a star-cluster with a nebula, and is known as 8 M. Sir John Herschel
has described the "nebulous folds and masses" and dark oval gaps which
he saw in this nebula with his large telescope at the Cape of Good Hope.
But no telescope is needed to make it appear a wonderful object; an
opera-glass suffices for that, and a field-glass reveals still more of
its marvelous structure.
The reader will recollect that we found the summer solstice close to a
wonderful star-swarm in the feet of Gemini. Singularly enough the winter
solstice is also near a star-cluster. It is to be found near a line
drawn from 8 M. to the star [mu] Sagittarii, and about one third of the
way from the cluster to the star. There is another less conspicuous
star-cluster still closer to the solstitial point here, for this part of
the heavens teems with such aggregations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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