Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/760

740 until we reach γ, a star with a history. The components of this celebrated binary are both nearly of the third magnitude, distance about 5'0″, p. 150°. They revolve around their common center in something less than two hundred years. According to some authorities, the period is one hundred and seventy years, but it is not yet certainly ascertained. It was noticed about the beginning of the seventeenth century that γ Virginis was double. In 1836 the stars were so close together that no telescope then in existence was able to separate them, although it is said that the disk into which they had merged was elongated at Pulkowa. In a few years they became easily separable once more. If the one-hundred-and-seventy-year period is correct, they should continue to get farther apart until about 1921. According to Asaph Hall, their greatest apparent distance is 6·3″, and their least apparent distance 0·5″; consequently, they will never again close up beyond the separating power of existing telescopes.

There is a great charm in watching this pair of stars even with a three-inch telescope—not so much on account of what is seen, although they are very beautiful, as on account of what we know they are doing. It is no slight thing to behold two distant stars obeying the law that makes a stone fall to the ground and compels the earth to swing round the sun.

In θ we discover a fine triple, magnitudes four and a half, nine, and ten; distances 7″, p. 345°, and 65″, p. 295°. The ninth-magnitude star has been described as "violet," but such designations of color are often misleading when the star is very faint. On the other hand it should not be assumed that a certain color does not exist because the observer can not perceive it, for experience shows that there is a wide difference among observers in the power of the eye to distinguish color. I have known persons who could not perceive the difference of hue in some of the most beautifully contrasted colored doubles to be found in the sky. Such persons miss one of the finest pleasures of the telescope. In examining θ Virginis we shall do best to use our largest aperture, viz., the five-inch. Yet Webb records that all three of the stars in this triple have been seen with a telescope of only three inches aperture. The amateur must remember in such cases how much depends upon practice as well as upon the condition of the atmosphere. There are lamentably few nights in a year when even the best telescope is ideally perfect in performance, but every night's observation increases the capacity of the eye, begetting a kind of critical judgment which renders it to some extent independent of atmospheric vagaries. It will also be found that the idiosyncrasies of the observer are reflected in his instrument, which seems to have its fits of excellence, its inspirations so to speak, while at other times it behaves as if all its wonderful powers had departed.