The Music of the Spheres

CHAPTER I. Behold,--the Stars!

BEHOLD,--THE STARS!

HOW thrilling to read of great hunts for treasure! Yet the pirates who dug their spades into the earthy loam never cached such jewels as are hidden along the dark slopes of the sky. Armed with a chart of the heavens, the fledgling astronomer prods about in the depths of the gloom, shovels the dark with the aid of his telescope, and discovers,--even more surely than the pirate his chest,--some wonderful treasure. Sometimes the find is a star-like diamond, a twinkling emerald, a fire-filled ruby or a cluster of star gems of colorful hues, but it may be, too, a profusion of riches, heaped in a magnificence that leaves one breathless.

One must know, however, before adventuring along the skyways, just where to look for these starry jewels. The air must also be clear and the eye color-true. In the tropics where the atmosphere is more transparent, the colors seem deeper and more beautiful. This is also true on deserts, on the ocean or on mountain tops.

To those who do not know that stars, even as jewels, have individuality, the various colorings will come as a special surprise. Vega, for instance, is large and most wonderfully blue, rising in the far northeast during the first of May; Arcturus, appearing at the same time near the zenith, is tinted like a King Midas' rose. On the first of June, Antares glows like a scarlet-shaded lamp hung low in the southeast, while in the northeast, creamy-hued Capella scintillates like the electrified cross-section of a rainbow. In the case of a double star where the colors are sharply contrasted--gold and blue or scarlet and green--the effect is startling and very beautiful. Weird looking purple stars and wan lavender ones may also be found, but all these lovely tints and shades are hidden among the hosts of more common yellow and white stars, and if one does not know just where to find them it is like hunting for treasure without a chart.

When the world was young, people gazed in never-ending wonder as the darkness of the heavens filled up with the lights of stars. According to an old Malayan story the stars were the children of the Moon-mother, who brought her children out only at night when the jealous sun, who had no children, was far away on the other side of the earth. The ancient Greeks believed that night came because the God of the Sun drove his sun-chariot along the invisible edge of the western ocean when he returned from the west to the east. All the natural laws of Nature were explained in some such naïve manner by the ancient peoples; the imagery of the Greeks is especially interesting, for they impressed shadowy figures on the very stars. These figures have given names to the constellations, or groups of stars, and to the student of Nature, the legends of these heroes traced in the sky add to the charm of the stars in the same manner that the delicate aroma of the rose enhances its loveliness.

Later, these remarkable people, in trying to account for the fixed and orderly movement of the stars as they slowly passed from east to west, adduced that they must be fastened in crystal spheres which whirled, one within the other, over and under the motionless disk of the earth. They noted that a few of these luminaries followed a wandering course, and so called them "planets"--which means "wandering stars." Since some of these wandering stars moved swiftly and others moved more slowly, they fancied, in their beautiful way of explaining things, that these different rates of speed must cause a musical tone as each star rolled upon its crystal, a deep note for the slow bodies and a high note for the swift bodies, and that with the infinite swelling harmony of all the myriad stars, one vast sweeping tone of heavenly music swirled around the spheres. But this music was for the gods and no mortal could hear it.

Our modern music of the spheres is no more audible to our dulled ears than the music of those ancient days, yet its silent song of light and color, its mystic setting of ancient tales, and its wonder background of scientific fact, descends in the same sweet way to all hearts lifted to receive it. Yet many people miss all this and only know that the stars are there.

It is easy to become acquainted with the more conspicuous of the star-designs which are formed by the brightest stars in a constellation for these seem to hang down from the dome of heaven like electrically lighted frames. Some of these, such as the "W" of Cassiopeia, the "Square" of Pegasus, the "parallelogram" of Orion, the Northern Cross and the Big Dipper, are not only ornaments in the sky, but serve also as guides to point the way to other constellations.

An endeavor has been made to arrange the constellations in this volume in the most easily-learned-without-effort way that could possibly be devised, and to present them in such a manner that the student will go out of doors with a picture of the position of the stars in his mind so that in more advanced study sky maps will acquire a new significance.

First the stars in the vicinity of the North Star are discussed--the two starry Bears and Draco, the Dragon; then the great sky drama of Perseus and Andromeda, with Cepheus, the King of Ethiopia, Cassiopeia, the Queen, Pegasus, the Flying Horse and Cetus, the terrible Sea-monster; the "parade of the zenith constellations" led by Leo, the fierce Nemean Lion; the constellations on either side of this interesting spectacle; the four great southern stars, each noted enough to have the stage by itself, and the gorgeous winter program with the brilliant stars of the Giant Orion, Taurus, the Bull, and Castor and Pollux, the Heavenly Twins.

Whirling about the sun in the same plane as the earth are seven other planets. These planets resemble stars to the unaided eye but show a definite disk through the telescope. With but the expenditure of an idle moment now and then, who would not like to learn a few facts about Jupiter, a world with nine moons and a thousand times larger than the earth; Saturn, a globe surrounded by a magnificent ring and composed of such diaphanous material that it would float on water; Mars, with its mysterious surface markings; Venus, shrouded in the secret of its impenetrable atmosphere; the hundreds of tiny worlds, some but a few miles across, and even the raging sun itself with its hydrogen flames, spots, moving belts and other idiosyncrasies?

These are only suggestions of what may be anticipated in our treasure hunt along the slopes of the sky, but every star that has once been found and called by name will stand forth from the multitude with a magnetic radiance that forever after thrills the discoverer with the pride of achievement.

CHAPTER II. An Introduction to the Stars

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STARS

"He who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the waters--the planets, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments, is the rich and royal man."

--Emerson.

THE dome of the heavens with its constellations of stars turns westward at the rate of about 15 degrees an hour.

Thus the stars, in unchanging order, rise majestically above the horizon in the east, wend their way across the great expanse of sky above our heads, and disappear below the horizon in the west. It is only necessary to note the position of a particularly bright star or a conspicuous constellation lying near the horizon and then return after several hours have elapsed and again note its position in the sky to prove this general movement toward the west. This is an interesting experiment for it is often a surprise to people to hear that the stars of the heaven are constantly shifting their position throughout the hours.

Each star has an individual pathway which describes an arc across the heavens, the exception to this being the circum polar stars which describe complete circles around a point north of the zenith.

The center indicated by the curved pathways of the stars is called the Pole of the Heavens, and in the northern hemisphere this important location is marked by the North Star. The North Star, also called Polaris or the Pole Star, lies almost directly above the north pole of the earth, and is located in the sky by the "pointers" on the bowl of the Big Dipper. [Figure 02] Since we cannot realize the whirling of the earth on its axis which causes the heavenly bodies to appear to pass in the opposite direction, it is the same to us as if the axis of the earth continued upward to Polaris, thus causing this star to seem to stand still, while all the other stars in the course of twenty-four hours seem to whirl in fixed orbits around it.

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