Flowers of the SkyProctor, Richard A. (Richard Anthony)
Science
Flowers of the Sky
Proctor, Richard A. (Richard Anthony)
Astronomy
In passing it may be remarked that there are reasons for expecting the
return of Tycho Brahé's star in the course of a few years. For other
new stars have been recorded as seen in the same part of the heavens in
the years 945 and 1264, and though the interval from 945 to 1264 (or 319
years) exceeds by 11 years the interval from 1264 to 1572 (or 308
years), yet the difference is but small by comparison with either entire
interval; and we may not unreasonably believe that the three new stars
seen in Cassiopeia have been only three apparitions of one and the same
star, which shines out, with superior lustre, for a few months, once in
a period averaging about 313 years. It seems to me not at all unlikely
that, some time during the next twenty years, astronomers will have an
opportunity of examining, with the telescope and spectroscope, a star
which last appeared before either instrument had been invented.
Already facts are known respecting the so-called new stars which will
not permit us to accept the explanations of old so readily offered and
admitted, simply because so little was certainly known.
In the year 1866 a star appeared suddenly in the constellation of the
Northern Crown, where no star had before been visible to the naked eye.
It was a little below the arc of stars forming the celestial coronet.[7]
It shone as a second magnitude star when first seen, but very rapidly
diminished in lustre. It increased our knowledge in two important
respects.
First, on examining Argelander's charts of the northern heavens, the new
star was found to have been observed and charted as a tenth magnitude
star, that is, four magnitudes below the lowest limit of naked eye
vision. It was not, then, a new sun, though it might still truly be
called a new star, in this sense, that it was a new member of the set of
stars which adorn our skies as seen by ordinary vision.
In the second place, the star was subject to the searching scrutiny of
spectroscopic analysis, with results of a most interesting character.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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