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Show EiNCE DISCOVERS THAT SUN IS ONE OF DIMMEST STARS of & . jl , & wh - w X WINTERS AMD COOL SUMMERS ARE DUE TO ORB'S VAST HEAT VARIATIONS i Iithonian Folk find That- Many funs Are Thou-hnis Thou-hnis of Times Brighter and Hot-if;, Hot-if;, Earth Is Being fragged Along foward an Unknown Un-known -Corner of he Universe; Our )un Is Dying Fire I By BBNE BACHE. S secret is out! At last we noir the cause -of our frequent bunjres of weather. It is tho t observations made by the Kitcmn astronomers have proved fee sua is a "variable star." fijon liave the whole trouble in pill From inonih to month, and litam day to 13 the amount of bI energy 't ives out is con-fcvarjing. con-fcvarjing. "Whence it comes about toe summers are much hotter than jft and some winters much less I'hw others. Jed, the difference in the amount it eiyen off by the sun at one ind Another is in excess of 35 Mt. No' wonder that we feel it, fecli as ihe orb of day (so the fer bureau says) absolutely con-ill con-ill atmospheric phenomena on the fcei at ibis important facr. the Ionian has made a lung series of etions covering the last half years. It lias measured the heat fn rayday by day throughout that P-ihi most notable work in this eing dune on the summits of two eountains in California. One of tyeais, Mount Whitney, is the I piece of territory in the United 14,500 feet above the level of 8. at Heat Variation lbs otber p?nkT Mount Wilson Pasadena) was set up, not long 7Electing telescopo unapproachod Tpy any other instrument of the (BBt the world, its most conspicuous p beiDg a disk-shaped mirror over jBftei m diameter. The duty of .Bflpge glats is to gather as much aBss possible a matter highly es-BBu es-BBu where a study is to be made t! from distant stars and of the ct of beat they deliver upon the ff&ft should bo understood that the yBWoDe at Jlouut Wilson consists Krcly iu studying the sun as a JBlm also in observing the stars V' character as suns. It is de-.IBWi'0 de-.IBWi'0 knov; not only how big these IjflBMuns are, but also how hot V they are, nnd how bright. And it is obvious that everything we can find out about our own orb of (lav must shod. somc li"-ht upon tho problem of the suns in general. One of tbo oddest points about our own sun, as newly ascertained, is that the fluctuations in the amount of heat it gives out are, or seem to be. duo in large measure to the "corona." If it be asked, What is tho corona? tbo answer must be that nobody knows. It is never seen except when the sun is eclipsed hy the moon, and then it appears as a mysterious and ghostly veil, whitish of hue, which streams out in an irregular fashion to a distance of several ' millions of miles from the great fierv disk. The supposition is. however, (hat this veil is a cloud of meteoric particles such stuff as comets are made of and that, interposing a thicker barrier between sun and earth at some times than at others, it shuts off more heat at certain periods than at others. But the fluctuations, doubtless, doubt-less, are inn inly attributable to the alternation al-ternation of convulsive outbursts and relative quiescenccs on the solar surface. sur-face. Map of Universe During the last fifteen 'ears astron-onmrs astron-onmrs all over the world have been engaged en-gaged in photographing the heavenB with the help of telescopic cameras. The .job was a big one. but it is nearly finished fin-ished now, and tho pictures, when put together, will make a complete map of the universe- as viewed from tho speck of star-dust on which wo are privileged to dwell. Incidentally, a rough count of the stars has been made, and it seems that there aro about 1,000,000,000 of them. The fact Jjecomcs more impressive impress-ive when it is considered that every one of theso glittering orbs is a full-fJcdged full-fJcdged sun. Accent investigations go to show that our own sun is a rather particularly hot shir. But, on the other hand, it is not very bright, as stars go. Algol, in the Head of Medusa, though only a little bigger, gives out sixty-three times as much light. Proportionately to size with one-third more radiating surface), it is forty-seven times as brilliant as our orb of'day. Seems humiliating, does it not? And yet, perhaps it is .lust as well. How should we endure the glare if we were living on a satellite of Algol Al-gol Js! It is a curious fact, by the way, that Algol is twins. That is to say, it is SOW AS yS?XJ&Zmf . 7V?Zjj paired with a dark and extinct sun, almost al-most exactly the sizo of our sun. which eclipses Algol every sixty-nine hours, causing tho light of the latter to glare and fade alternately, like tho beam from a lighthouso with a revolving lamp. But even more odd is tho caso of tho bright star Castor, which revolves about an immense dark glob(j tho spectacle presented being that of a gigantic world with a sun actually circling around it. Measure Heat of Stars Tho Smithsonian folks, with tho help of an ingenious electrical thermometer, havo made accurate measurements of tho amount of heat delivered upon tho earth by a good many of the stars among them Sirius, Arctums, Alc3'ono and Alpha Ccntauri. This is accomplished accom-plished by catching a ray from a so-locted so-locted twinkler upon a mirror and throwing it through a tubo in such a way as to mako it fall upou a thread of platinum. Inasmuch as tho electrical elec-trical resistance of the metal varies directly di-rectly with its temperature, the amount of heat carried by tho star can bo exactly determined by a delicate galvanometer. gal-vanometer. To incisure tho brilliancy of a star i. c., tho amount of light it omits is a problem altogether different, of course. In this case tho Polo star is taken as a standard. By an arrangement arrange-ment of mirrors, tho image of tho Polo star is thrown upou tho object glass of a telescope, sido by side with that of the star whose brightness is to bo determined. Then tho two aro compared, com-pared, and, by certain mathematical means, tho matter is determined with absolute accuracy. Thus, as above stated, it is known that Algol gives out sixty-threo times as much light as our own sun. But what docs that amount to? Why, Vega, in tho constellation of Lyre, is 1000 times as brilliant as our own orb of day. And this is a fact of special intercsL to us, inasmuch as the entiro solar system (to -which wo belong) is moving directly toward Yega at a speed of tcu miles a second. The reader is already many hundreds of miles nearer to that giant sun than when he began to peruso this article. Largest of All Suns Vega itself, however, is dwarfed by Arcturus the Star of Job, largest of all the suns, and the greatest center of radiant energy tho universe contains. con-tains. Five thousand suns like ours would bo required to give as much light as is emitted by this, tho mightiest membor of all the shining multitudes that throncr tho Milkv Wuv. So it -would seem that our sun, while a right hot littlo star, is not much to brag about, as heavenly bodies go. It is, in fact, a star of only the fifta magnitude, mag-nitude, and of inferior brightness. As well as tho astronomers can mako out, it occupies a position not far from tho middle of what we call tho universe uni-verse or, in other words, of tho Milky Way. Tiio universe has tho form of a disk; and, when wo gaze at the Milky Way, we are looking through it edgewise from tho center which is the reason wlvy tho stars look so thick. Yet, as a matter of fact, tho stars which look bo closely huddled togother in tbo Milky Way are "separated from each other by an averago distance of six and a half light-years. In other words, a my of light, which travels R unaway StarA tfZhich Is Giant Sun, Has Invaded Our Universe and Is Passing Through it at the Rate of 200 Miles Per Second, Sec-ond, andWillPass on Into Other Universes Uni-verses 180,000 miles a second, would require six and a half yoars to-paas from one to another of these celestial neighbors. neigh-bors. Sun Has One Neighbor My. but it is lonely in the midst of space! Tho sun has only one near neighbor Alpha Centauri and. he is four light-3'pp.r.s away. Too fnr, one fears, for visiting purposes; and a pity, too, for in all likelihood Alpha Cen-tauri Cen-tauri has a flock of planets of his own, at least some of them inhabited. But, if one were to have an opportunity oppor-tunity to pick another system to live in, surely it would bo jolliest and most interesting- to become a dweller "on one of "satellites of "1830 Groom-bridge.'' Groom-bridge.'' That is the astronomers' name for it, .but it is moro familiarly known as the Runaway star. A ginnt sun, many times as big as ours, it is traveling through our universe at tho astonishing speed of 200 miles a second. sec-ond. Nothing anywhere in creation was ever seen to move so fnst. No force wo know of in nature could havo set it going at such a pace, and. no force of which wo have knowledge could bring it to a pause. The likelihood seems to be that it is a visitor from some other universe, inconceivably distant, and that eventually it will pa'ss ont and away into tho void of space perhaps to reach eventually still anoth'er and equally unknown un-known universe beyond. Meanwhile, what is to becomo of ourselves? our-selves? The late Professor Simon Now-comb, Now-comb, greatest of modern astronomers, declared that wo might expect to reach the neighborhood of Vega within 500,-000 500,-000 years or so. Perhaps tho earth may beco'me a satellito of that great buu, in time to save us from freezing to death by reason of tho burning out of our own solar luminary, which, science tells us, is already Bhowiug alarming symptoms of old ago and decrepitude. |
