The children's book of stars; . atfirst be disappointed, for all you will see is a soft blurof white, as if someone had laid a dab of luminouspaint on the sky with a finger; but as you gaze atit night after night and realize its unchangeableness,realize also that it is a mass of glowing gas, an islandin space, infinitely distant, unsupported and in-explicable, something of the wonder of it will creepover you. Thousands of telescopic nebulae are now known,and have been examined, and they are of aU , they have been divided up into severalclasses—those that seem to us to be round an
The children's book of stars; . atfirst be disappointed, for all you will see is a soft blurof white, as if someone had laid a dab of luminouspaint on the sky with a finger; but as you gaze atit night after night and realize its unchangeableness,realize also that it is a mass of glowing gas, an islandin space, infinitely distant, unsupported and in-explicable, something of the wonder of it will creepover you. Thousands of telescopic nebulae are now known,and have been examined, and they are of aU , they have been divided up into severalclasses—those that seem to us to be round and thosethat are long ovals, like this one in Andromeda;but these may, of course, be only round ones seenedgewise by us; others are very irregular, andspread over an enormous part of the sky. Themost remarkable of these is that in Orion, andif you look very hard at the middle star in thesword-hUt of Orion, you may be able to make out afaint mistiness. This, when seen through a tele-scope, becomes a wonderful and far-spreading. Dr. A/ax li^!f. THK GREAT IN STAR CLUSTERS AND NEBULA 203 nebula, with brighter and darker parts like gulfsin it, and dark channels. It has been sometimescalled the Fish-mouth Nebula, from a fanciful ideaas to its shape. Indeed, so extraordinarily variedare these curious structures, that they have beencompared with numbers of different objects. Wehave some like brushes, others resembling fans, rings,spindles, keyholes ; others like animals—a fish, acrab, an owl, and so on; but these suggestions areimaginative, and have nothing +£> do with the realproblem. In The System of the Stars Miss Gierkesays: In regarding these singular structures weseem to see surges and spray-flakes of a nebulousocean, bewitched into sudden immobUity; or a rackof tempest-driven clouds hanging in the sky,momentarily awaiting the transforming violenceof a fresh onset. Sometimes continents of palelight are separated by narrow straits of comparativedarkne
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectastronomy, bookyear19
