Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/73

Rh was it that suddenly produced the incandescence of the sun of the Corona, transforming it from a star of the ninth to one of the second magnitude?

What would become of our planet were such a revolution as this to take place in the sun, and were the calorific and luminous radiation to be suddenly increased a hundred-fold?



But let us come to the new star of the Swan, which is the main object of this article. Here is a very brief narrative of its discovery.

Julius Schmidt, director of the observatory at Athens, recently wrote to M. Le Verrier the following letter:

At Paris, too, the sky was almost constantly overcast for some days after the reception of Schmidt's letter. By taking advantage of infrequent and imperfect seasons of clear sky. Prosper Henry succeeded in observing the new star. Compared with the star 915 of Weisse's catalogue (hour 21), it had this approximate position:

It was of the fifth magnitude, and appeared to be of a greenish color, almost blue, as compared with a neighboring star (42,304 of Lalande).

The new star was also observed at Vienna by Littrow. To him