Round the year with the stars: The chief beauties of the starry heavens as seen with the naked eyeServiss, Garrett Putman
Science
Round the year with the stars: The chief beauties of the starry heavens as seen with the naked eye
Serviss, Garrett Putman
Astronomy -- Popular works
To every season its flowers--and to every season its stars. The gardens
of the sky are not the same in autumn as in summer, either in their
arrangement or in the peculiarities of their bloom. There is less
parade of flaming beauty, but the richness of the _coup d’œil_ is not
inferior. And just as in our September parterres some of the summer
beauties remain, though a little faded, to support with their charms
their stately successors, so in the skies of autumn a few of the summer
stars are yet seen, though somewhat robbed of their pristine splendor
as they sink toward the sunset. The garland of the Milky Way has now
been flung all across the firmament, from northeast to southwest, and
while Vega and Altair hang half-way down the curtain of the west,
recalling the glories of the solstice, Capella appears rising in the
northeast, and Cassiopeia, not less beautiful in the sky than when she
awoke the jealousy of the sea-nymphs, is seen seated in her “shiny
chair” east of the meridian in the north. Between Cassiopeia and
Capella flashes Perseus, with his uplifted sword marked by a curve of
stars embedded in the Milky Way, and above Perseus stands Andromeda,
upright, with her feet toward her rescuer and her head touching
the “Great Square of Pegasus,” near the middle of the sky, east of
the meridian. Cepheus, the King, is on the meridian above the pole.
Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Andromeda, and Perseus constitute the “Royal
Family” of the sky, more enduring than the proud dynasties that by
turns have ruled terrestrial affairs.
[Illustration: CHART III--THE AUTUMN EVENING SKY]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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