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14 Königstahl took with his then new Bruce objective some long exposure plates of the nova, and on them found, to his surprise, wisps of nebulous matter to the southeast of the star. On September 20 Ritchey, with a two-foot mirror of his own constructing exposed for four hours, brought the whole formation to light. It turned out to be a spiral nebula encircling and apparently emanating from the star. Its connection with the nova was patent. But there was more to come. Later plates taken at the Lick on November 7 disclosed the startling fact that the nebula was visibly expanding, uncoiling outward from the star. A plate by Ritchey on November 13 confirmed this, and still later plates by him in December, January, and February showed the motion to be progressive. At the same time the star showed no parallax, and the speed of the motion seemed thus to be indicated as enormous. Kapteyn suggested to account for it that appearance, not reality, was here concerned; that the nebula had always existed, and was only shown up by the light from the conflagration travelling outward from the nova at the rate of one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second. This would make the catastrophe to have occurred as far back as the time of James I, of which the news more truthful but less timely than that of the morning papers had only just reached us.

But a little of that simple reasoning by which Zadig