Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/173

 is the hunting scene of the giant Orion. The River Eridanus may also be seen flowing from a star near Rigel, on the foot of Orion, to a point on the shore of the "Sea."

Formalhaut rises in the south at twilight about the 10th of October and wanders westward in a small arc above the horizon. It is visible such a short time that it is said that it comes "when the leaves begin to fall and goes while they are still falling." This star rises in the south at the same time that Capella rises in the northeast, but an easier way of locating it may be found by estimating two-thirds of the distance across the sky from the outside stars in the bowl of the Big Dipper. It also lies almost exactly in a straight line with the two stars on the west side of the great Square of Pegasus at a distance equal to 3⅓ times the distance between them and the southernmost of the two.



If all the diamonds in the world were melted into one huge, magical jewel, its sparkling brilliance would pale beside Sirius, the diamond of the heavens.

This wonderful, iridescent beauty, fresh as a prismatic ice-flame, if such a thing might be, is best appreciated on a clear, cold winter night when the little stars swarm out like fire-flies and the large stars burn like Aladdin gems of frost and fringing fire.

The ancient Greeks, strange to say, dreaded the sight of this beautiful star, for they not only imagined that its "burning breath" caused the unhealthy and oppressive heats of summer but that it was directly responsible for their parched grass and blighted corn, their mad dogs and raging fevers!

The unpopularity of this star was due to the fact that during