Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/490

474 the cosmical wrack through which it had driven remained glowing with nebulous luminosity? Such an explanation has been offered by Seeliger. Or was Vogel right when he suggested that Nova Aurigeæ could be accounted for by supposing that a wandering dark body had run into collision with a system of planets surrounding a decrepit sun (and therefore it is to be hoped uninhabited), and that those planets had been reduced to vapor and sent spinning by the encounter, the second outburst of light being caused by an outlying planet of the system falling a prey to the vagabond destroyer? Or some may prefer the explanation, based on a theory of Wilsing's, that two great bodies, partially or wholly opaque and nonluminous at their surfaces, but liquid hot within, approached one another so closely that the tremendous strain of their tidal attraction burst their shells asunder so that their bowels of fire gushed briefly visible, amid a blaze of spouting vapors. And yet Lockyer thinks that there was no solid or semisolid mass concerned in the phenomenon at all, but that what occurred was simply the clash of two immense swarms of meteors that had crossed one another's track.

Well, where nobody positively knows, everybody has free choice. In the meantime, look at the spot in the sky where that little star made its appearance and underwent its marvelous transformation, for, even if you can see no remains of it there, you will feel your interest in the problem it has presented, and in the whole subject of astronomy, greatly heightened and vivified, as the visitor to the field of Waterloo becomes a lover of history on the spot.

The remaining objects of special interest in Auriga may be briefly mentioned: 26, triple star, magnitudes five, eight, and eleven, distances 12″, p. 268°, and 26″, p. 113°; 14, triple star, magnitudes five, seven and a half, and eleven, distances 14″, p. 224°, and 12·6″, p. 342°, the last difficult for moderate apertures; λ, double, magnitudes five and nine, distance 121″, p. 13°; ε, variable, generally of third magnitude, but has been seen of only four and a half magnitude; 41, double, magnitudes five and six, distance 8″, p. 354°; 990, 1007, 1119, and 1166, clusters all well worth inspection, 1119 being especially beautiful.

The inconspicuous Lynx furnishes some fine telescopic objects, all grouped near the northwestern corner of the constellation. Without a six-inch telescope it would be a waste of time to attack the double star 4, whose components are of sixth and eighth magnitudes, distance 0·8″, p. 103°; but its neighbor, 5, a fine triple, is within our reach, the magnitudes being six, ten, and eight, distances 30″, p. 139°, and 90″, p. 272°. In 12 Lyncis we find one of the most attractive of triple stars, which in good seeing weather is not beyond the powers of a three-inch glass, although we shall