Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/247

Rh Deneb can be seen at some time between sunset and midnight every night in the year in these latitudes. Mrs. Martin pays it this charming tribute: "Deneb is particularly attractive in the early evening in January and February. It is then rather low in the north-west and with Vega gone, and no other bright star very near, it has a more commanding charm. In the heavier atmosphere which induces a more rapid twinkling, the star seems to take on an accession of gaiety, and goes fairly dancing down behind the horizon, where it finishes its circle and appears again in the north-east about four hours later."

Deneb culminates at 9, Sept. 16th.

Cygnus is a splendid field for telescopes, great and small. Its chief object of beauty is the incomparably beautiful double star, Beta Cygni, also known as " Albireo," situated in the base of the Cross and in the beak of the Swan. Even in a small telescope the contrast in the colours of these two close set stars is well emphasised, and the sight of these suns, the one gold, the other blue, never fails to charm all who view them. As this double is easily split by small telescopes, Albireo is a great favourite with all amateur astronomers.

Cygnus contains many deeply coloured red and orange stars, and Birmingham called this part of the heavens "the Red Region," or "the Red Region of Cygnus."

Espin gives a list of one hundred stars in this constellation that are double, triple, or multiple.

The 2.7 magnitude star γ Cygni was called "Sadr" by the Arabs, meaning the "Hen's Breast." Allen says, "it lies in the midst of a beautiful stream of small stars, itself being involved in a diffused nebulosity extending to α Cygni, while the space from γ to β Cygni is perhaps richer than any of similar extent in the heavens." In this space, according to Herschel, the stars in the Milky Way seem, to be clustering into two separate divisions, each division containing more than 165,000 stars. So rich is this region of the heavens in stars, that Herschel counted 331,000 in a width of only five degrees.