Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XII.djvu/207

 NEBULA 199 them with temples, palaces, aqueducts, and other public works. The ruins of more than 100 towns and cities contain inscriptions of his name. (See BABYLON, and BABYLONIA.) Early in his reign the Jews and Phoe- nicians rebelled. Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem, carried many of its chief people away captive, including Jehoiachin the king, and made Zede- kiah king as his vassal ; and when several years later he rebelled, being aided by Egypt, Nebuchadnezzar again besieged Jerusalem, and after defeat- ing the Egyptian king Apries (the Pharaoh-Hophra of Scripture), who came to its relief, compelled it to sur- render. (See HEBREWS, vol. viii., p. 589.) During these wars his armies invested Tyre, and took it after a siege of 13 years. Four years later he marched through Palestine into Egypt, which he ravaged, but did not completely subjugate. He elevated Daniel and other Hebrew captives to high office in Babylon. (See DANIEL.) The book of Daniel relates how he fell under the divine judgment on account of his pride, lost his reason, was deprived of his kingdom, and lived the life of a beast ; and how he was restored to health and power, and acknowl- edged the judgment of God. It has been thought that his malady was a form of the madness called lycanthropy, in which the pa- tient imagines himself a beast. NEBULA (Lat., mist, vapor), an aggregation of stars or stellar matter having the appear- ance, through an ordinary telescope, of a small, cloud-like patch of light. An enlargement of telescopic power usually converts this appear- ance into a cluster of innumerable stars, besides bringing to light other nebulae before invisible. These in turn yield to augmented magnifying power; and thus every increase in the capa- city of the telescope adds to the number of clusters resolved from nebulae, and of nebulae invisible to lower powers. Nebulae proper, or those which have not been definitely resolved, are found in nearly every quarter of the firma- ment, though abounding especially near those regions which have fewest stars. Scarcely any are found near the milky way, and the great mass of them lie in th6 two opposite spaces furthest removed from this circle. Their forms are very various, and often undergo strange and unexpected changes as the power of the telescope with which they are viewed is increased, so as not to be recognizable in some cases as the same objects. The spiral nebulae are an example of this transforma- tion. This class was recognized by Lord Rosse through the use of his six-foot reflector. Many of them had been long known as nebulae, but their characteristic spiral form had never been suspected. They have the appearance of a maelstrom of stellar matter, and are among the most interesting objects in the heavens. There is another class of nebulae which bear a close resemblance to planetary disks, and are hence called planetary nebulae. They are very FIG. 1. Spiral Nebula in Canes Venatici. rare. Some of them present remarkable pe- culiarities of color. Sir John Herschel has described a beautiful example of this class, sit- Fio. 2. Stellar Nebula. FIG. 3. Planetary Nebula. uated in the southern cross. But in telescopes of the highest power some of the so-called FIG. 4. Annular Nebula in Lyra. planetary nebulae assume a totally different appearance ; and many of them are singular- ly complicated in structure, instead of being