But what was the meaning of all this? Evidently a catastrophe of some kind had occurred out there in space. The idea of a collision involving the transformation of the energy of motion into that of light and heat suggests itself at once. But what were the circumstances of the collision? Did an extinguished sun, flying blindly through space, plunge into a vast cloud of meteoric particles, and, under the lashing impact of so many myriads of missiles, break into superficial incandescence, while the cosmical wrack through which it had driven remained glowing with nebulous luminosity? Such an explanation has been offered by Seeliger. Or was Vogel right when he suggested that Nova Aurigae could be accounted for by supposing that a wandering dark body had run into collision with a system of planets surrounding a decrepit sun (and therefore it is to be hoped uninhabited), and that those planets had been reduced to vapor and sent spinning by the encounter, the second outburst of light being caused by an outlying planet of the system falling a prey to the vagabond destroyer? Or some may prefer the explanation, based on a theory of Wilsing's, that _two_ great bodies, partially or wholly opaque and non-luminous at their surfaces, but liquid hot within, approached one another so closely that the tremendous strain of their tidal attraction burst their shells asunder so that their bowels of fire gushed briefly visible, amid a blaze of spouting vapors. And yet Lockyer thinks that there was no solid or semisolid mass concerned in the phenomenon at all, but that what occurred was simply the clash of two immense swarms of meteors that had crossed one another's track. Well, where nobody positively knows, everybody has free choice. In the meantime, look at the spot in the sky where that little star made its appearance and underwent its marvelous transformation, for, even if you can see no remains of it there, you will feel your interest in the problem it has presented, and in the whole subject of astronomy, greatly heightened and vivified, as the visitor to the field of Waterloo becomes a lover of history on the spot. The remaining objects of special interest in Auriga may be briefly mentioned: 26, triple star, magnitudes five, eight, and eleven, distances 12", p. 268 deg., and 26", p. 113 deg.; 14, triple star, magnitudes five, seven and a half, and eleven, distances 14", p. 224 deg., and 12.6", p. 342 deg., the last difficult for moderate apertures; lambda, double, magnitudes five and nine, distance 121", p. 13 deg.; epsilon, variable, generally of third magnitude, but has been seen of only four and a half magnitude; 41, double, magnitudes five and six, distance 8", p. 354 deg.; 996, 1067, 1119, and 1166, clusters all well worth inspection, 1119 being especially beautiful.