Page:The Friendly Stars by Martha Evans Martin.djvu/141

 sand times as much light as our sun, and its distance from the solar system is so great that we do not receive the light from the star for more than one hundred and sixty years after it has started towards us, moving though it does at the rate of six trillions of miles a year. This tremendous distance is constantly increasing, though the rate of increase is comparatively small; for Regulus is receding from us at the rate of about fifteen miles a second, which means that the distance between us and the star is increased each year by nearly five hundred millions of miles.

Regulus is in the constellation called Leo, or the Lion. The blade of the Sickle marks the shoulder of the Lion, and Regulus lies at its heart. The star is sometimes called "Cor Leonis," meaning "the Heart of the Lion." The name Regulus means "chief."

The constellation Leo is one of those through which the sun passes in its apparent annual path across the heavens. It is in this constellation a little more than five weeks, entering it at the beginning of the second week in August. Two weeks later the sun passes Regulus, and as the star lies almost exactly in the path of the sun, they