Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/20

 " led by Leo, the fierce Nemean Lion; the constellations on either side of this interesting spectacle; the four great southern stars, each noted enough to have the stage by itself, and the gorgeous winter program with the brilliant stars of the Giant Orion, Taurus, the Bull, and Castor and Pollux, the Heavenly Twins.

Whirling about the sun in the same plane as the earth are seven other planets. These planets resemble stars to the unaided eye but show a definite disk through the telescope. With but the expenditure of an idle moment now and then, who would not like to learn a few facts about Jupiter, a world with nine moons and a thousand times larger than the earth; Saturn, a globe surrounded by a magnificent ring and composed of such diaphanous material that it would float on water; Mars, with its mysterious surface markings; Venus, shrouded in the secret of its impenetrable atmosphere; the hundreds of tiny worlds, some but a few miles across, and even the raging sun itself with its hydrogen flames, spots, moving belts and other idiosyncrasies?

These are only suggestions of what may be anticipated in our treasure hunt along the slopes of the sky, but every star that has once been found and called by name will stand forth from the multitude with a magnetic radiance that forever after thrills the discoverer with the pride of achievement.