Page:In the high heavens.djvu/218

 moment. It may at all events be confidently asserted that the condensation of a nebula into a star is a process which has never been witnessed. Whether any stages in that process can be said to have been witnessed is a different matter, on which it is not easy to speak with precision. Drawings of the same nebula made at different dates often exhibit great discrepancies. In comparing these drawings, it must be remembered that a nebula is an object usually devoid of distinct outline, and varying greatly in appearance with different telescopic apertures. Take, for instance, the very splendid nebula in Orion, which is one of the most glorious objects that can be seen in a telescope. There can be no doubt that the drawings made at different times do exhibit most marked differences. Indeed, the differences are sometimes so great that it is hard to believe that the same object is depicted. It is well to look also at drawings made of the same object at the same time, but by different observers and with different telescopes. Where we find contemporary drawings at variance and they are often widely at variance it seems hard to draw any conclusion from drawings as to the presence or the absence of change in the shape of the nebula.

There are, however, good grounds for believing that nebulæ really do undergo some changes, at least as regards brightness; but whether these changes are such as Herschel's theory would seem to require is quite another question. Perhaps the best authenticated instance is that of the variable nebula in the constellation of Taurus, discovered by Mr. Hind in 1852. At the time of its discovery this object was a small nebula about one minute in diameter, with a central condensation of light. D'Arrest,