Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 32.djvu/533

 eastward, and finally flowing back more than half-way to Orion, and then curving south again and disappearing beneath the horizon. Throughout this whole distance of more than 100° the course of the stream is marked by rows of stars, and can be recognized without difficulty by the amateur observer.

The first thing to do with your opera-glass, after you have fixed the general outlines of the constellation in your mind by naked eye observations, is to sweep slowly over the whole course of the stream, beginning at Rigel, and following its various wanderings. Eridanus ends in the southern hemisphere near a first-magnitude star called Achernar, which is situated in the stream, but can not be seen from our latitudes. Along the stream you will find many interesting groupings of the stars. In the map see the pair of stars below and to the right of Nu (ν). These are the two Omicrons, the upper one being ο1 and the lower one ο2. The latter is of an orange hue, and is remarkable for the speed with which it is flying through space. There are only one or two stars whose proper motion, as it is called, is more rapid than that of ο2 in Eridanus. It changes its place nearly seven minutes of arc in a century. The records of the earliest observations we possess show that near the beginning of the Christian era it was about half-way between ο1 and ν. Its companion, ο1, on the contrary, seems to be almost stationary, so that ο2 will gradually draw away from it, passing on toward the southwest until, in the course of centuries, it will become invisible from our latitudes. This flying star is accompanied by two minute companions, which in themselves form a close and very delicate double star. These two little stars, of only 9·5 and 10·5 magnitude, respectively, are, of course, beyond the ken of the observer with an opera-glass. The system of which they form a part, however, is intensely interesting, since the appearances indicate that they belong, in the manner of satellites, to ο2, and are fellow-voyagers of that wonderful star.

Having admired the star-groups of Eridanus, one of the prettiest of which is to be seen around Beta (β), let us turn next to Taurus, just above or north of Eridanus. Two remarkable clusters at once attract the eye, the Hyades, which are shaped somewhat like the letter V, with Aldebaran in the upper end of the left-hand branch, and the Pleiades, whose silvery glittering has made them celebrated in all ages. The Pleiades are in the shoulder and the Hyades in the face of Taurus, Aldebaran most appropriately representing one of his blazing eyes as he hurls himself against Orion. The constellation makers did not trouble themselves to make a complete Bull, and only the head and fore-quarters of the animal are represented. If Taurus had been completed on the scale on which he was begun there would have been no room in the sky for Aries; one of the Fishes would have had to abandon his celestial swimming-place, and even the fair Andromeda would have found herself uncomfortably situated. But as if to make