Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/810

792 represented on the map are worth examining, although none of them calls for special mention, except perhaps 584, where we may distinguish at least a hundred separate stars within an area less than one quarter as expansive as the face of the moon.

Among the double stars of Perseus we note first η, whose components are of magnitudes four and eight, distance 28″, colors white and pale blue. The double ε is especially interesting on account of an alleged change of color from blue to red which the smaller star undergoes coincidently with a variation of brightness. The magnitudes are three and eight, distance 9″, p. 9°. An interesting multiple is ζ, two of whose stars at least we can see. The magnitudes are three, nine, ten, and ten, distances 13″, p. 207°, 90″, and 112″.

The chief attraction in Perseus is the changeful and wonderful β, or Algol, the great typical star among the short-period variables. During the greater part of its period this star is of magnitude two and two tenths, but for a very short time, following a rapid loss of light, it remains at magnitude three and seven tenths. The difference, one magnitude and a half, corresponds to an actual difference in brightness in the ratio of 3·75 to 1. The entire loss of light during the declension occupies only four hours and a half. The star remains at its faintest for a few minutes only before a perceptible gain of light occurs, and the return to maximum is as rapid as was the preceding decline. The period from one minimum to the next is two days twenty hours forty-eight minutes fifty-three seconds, with an irregularity amounting to a few seconds in a year. The Arabs named the star Algol, or the Demon, on account of its eccentricity which did not escape their attention; and when Goodricke, in 1782, applied a scientific method of observation to it, the real cause of its variations was suggested by him, but his explanation failed of general acceptance until its truth was established by Prof. E. C. Pickering in 1880. This explanation gives us a wonderful insight into stellar constitution. According to it, Algol possesses a companion as large as the sun, but invisible, both because of its proximity to that star and because it yields no light, and revolving in a plane horizontal to our line of sight. The period of revolution is identical with the period of Algol's cycle of variation, and the diminution of light is caused by the interposition of the dark body as it sweeps along that part of its orbit lying between our point of view and the disk of Algol. In other words, once in every two days twenty hours and forty-nine minutes Algol, as seen from the earth, undergoes a partial eclipse.

In consequence of the great comparative mass of its dark companion, Algol itself moves in an orbit around their common center with a velocity quite sufficient to be detected by the shifting