One Hundred Million of Stars

1895

Let us see what richness of stellar distribution is implied by this number of 100,000,000 of visible stars. It may be easily shown that the area of the whole sky in both hemispheres is 41,255 square degrees. This gives 2,424 stars to the square degree. The moon's apparent diameter being slightly over half a degree — 31 minutes 5 seconds — the area of its disk is about one-fifth of a square degree. The area of the whole star sphere is consequently about 200,000 times the area of the full moon. A total of 100,000,000 of stars gives, therefore, 500 stars to each space of sky equal in area to the full moon.

This seems a large number, but stars scattered even as thickly as this would appear at a considerable distance apart when viewed with a telescope of a high power. As the area of the moon's disk contains about 760 square minutes of arc, there would not be an average of even one star to each square minute. A pair of stars half a minute or 30 seconds apart would form a very wide double star, and with stars placed at even this distance the moon's disk would cover about 3,000, or six times the actual number visible in the largest telescopes. — Gentleman's Magazine.

Photographing Unseen Stars

1895

One of the most popular and eminent lecturers on astronomy is Sir Robert Ball, who uses simple and graphic illustrations to give his hearers ideas of magnitude and distance. For instance, he says that going at the rate of the electric telegraph — that is, 186,000 miles a second — it would take 78 years to telegraph a message to the most distant telescopic stars, but the camera has revealed stars far more distant than these, some of which, if a message had been sent in the year A. D. 1 — that is to say, 1,894 years ago — the message would only just have reached some of them and would be still on the way to others, going at the rate of 186,000 miles a second.

Plan of the Universe So Vast It Baffles Human Comprehension

1920

Orion
By S. F. Maxwell
[Copyright, 1920, by W. D. Boyce Co.]

What is the plan of the universe? Time and space go on and on forever, but there is a limit to the stars, in this little corner of the sky, at least.

The stellar universe is vast almost beyond comprehension. We think the 92,000,000 miles to the sun is an immense distance, yet light crosses it in eight minutes. The distance light goes in a year is the ordinary unit for stellar distances, yet in measuring the size of the universe it is entirely too small.

Example in Reduced Proportions.

Here is an example of the proportions of outer space. Let the earth's orbit be represented by a silver dime. Then Mars is one inch away, Jupiter 5 inches, Saturn eight inches, Uranus seventeen inches and Neptune thirty inches. This ends the sun's little family of planets. The nearest star on this scale is three miles away, the next is seven, the next nine, and most of the others are hundreds and thousands Of miles away.

Now multiply this scale enough to make the dime 186,000,000 miles in diameter, and you have a fair idea of the size of the universe. We can see the stars clearly over such enormous expanses of space because they are exceedingly bright and also because an absolute vacuum exists between, with nothing to stop their speeding light waves.

There are forces permeating all this great expanse, chief of which is gravity. It is nowhere as strong as the gravity we experience on the surface of the earth, but as there is no force adequate to counteract it, it swings the stars about just as the sun swings its planets.

There are two streams of stars in the sky, rushing along like motes in a sunbeam. The two streams mix at times, and mingle together without apparently suffering in the least. Stars are to a great extent independent of their nearest neighbors. There are many close clusters that move from birth to death without the component parts falling together at all.

Streams of Moving Stars.

Astronomers, watching the stars of the sky moving in great streams, were much impressed by the amount of force necessary to hold so great a bulk of stars together. Left to themselves they could go on and on forever, and the universe would eventually disintegrate. Nothing like this seems to be taking place. The source of energy remained a mystery until it was discovered that the Orion stars did not partake of the general motion. They alone, of all the stars in the sky, stand still, and all the others wheel around them.

Orion is a gigantic constellation, and its suns are all huge, heavy bodies, whose tremendous pull of gravity is felt in every part of the celestial vault.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 9.

Film Star Called as Poker Witness

1920

Norma Talmadge to Testify in Peculiar Case

New Yorker Arrested, Accused of Cheating Celebrities Out of $350,000 at Cards

NEW YORK, N, Y., March 18. — The last card in Broadway's sensational stud poker season was turned down by Justice Kernochan in the Court of Special Sessions.

It was a warrant for the arrest of Louis Krohnberg, wealthy manufacturer of women's wear, at whose home Norma Talmadge and other New York celebrities are said to have lost approximately $350,000 by the use of marked cards.

Discovery of cheating, it is said, was made during the final game of the series played at the home of Joseph Schenck, husband of Norma Talmadge.

Exposed by Actress

Guests at the party, which was held on New Year's Eve, ascribe most of the credit for the detection to Miss Talmadge, whose husband brought about a dramatic denoument by betting wildly into Krohnberg's pair of aces with a pair of kings, and then kicking Krohnberg into the street on the show down.

At the hearing Jacob Silverman, who appeared as complainant, testified that he had lost $7,300 at Krohnberg's home, and, suspecting dishonesty, had taken away one of the decks used in the game. The cards, he said, were later found to be "readers," the fleur-de-lis on their backs being marked in such a way that the player in the secret could recognise them.

Huge Penalty Possible

All the participants in the games, including Miss Talmadge, will be required to testify when Krohnberg is brought to trial. In the event that Krohnberg is found guilty, five times the amount of the players' losses may be collected and distributed among charities designated by the State.

There is some dispute concerning the amount lost by the players. Mr. Silverman says $530,000 is an approximate estimate. Krohnberg's attorneys deny all the charges and display checks aggregating $68,000 indorsed by Mr. Schneck and others as payees, which, they say, represent losses suffered by their client.

Quips on The News — "A Boston Spinster"

1911

A Boston spinster wants a five-dollar tax on bachelors. But surely she would not have any man value her so cheaply that he would marry her to save a paltry five.

Harvard astronomers have discovered a new star, but as said star is not one of the football variety, the discovery is not making much of a hit with the students.

"Chicago is a burglar's paradise," says a jurist who is in a position to know. Aside from that and a few other defects it is a good place to live in if one isn't particular.

Europe has now definitely decided that Tolstoi was insane. This may be true, but it seems as though a little more of that sort of insanity wouldn't hurt Europe any.

If the fashion of wearing tight trousers and padless coats comes into general use we know a great many supposedly brawny men who will dwindle woefully in appearance.

Many readers of newspapers have wondered at the meaning of those oft-repeated words found at the end of mysterious disappearance stories: "Detectives have been assigned to the case."

Movement of Earth's Poles

1904

One of the strange phenomena of nature for which an explanation has long been sought is the fact that the earth's poles undergo a certain more or less irregular displacement, says Harper's Weekly.

Professor John Milne, of England, well known as an authority on earthquakes, has suggested that this displacement may be due to movements of the earth's crust, and consequently depend on the number and frequency, of earthquakes. The theory attracted the attention of M. A. de Lapparent, who has studied the subject with the aid of observations made of earthquakes, as well as of astronomical observations of the movement of the poles, and his results are strongly confirmatory of the English seismologist's theory.

Any movement of the earth's crust, such as the sinking of an ocean bed or the rising of a continent, apparently occasions earthquakes and earth tremors and it is only reasonable to believe that such movements must produce some change in the distribution of the mass of the earth, which would, of course, directly affect the position of the earth's axis, which is also affected by other and exterior causes.

Conversely, by studying the change in the position of the earth's axis by astronomical observations it would be possible to study the changes in the earth's crust. This new science, according to knowledge, "might almost be called the new astrology, since we might perceive, in the apparent motions of the stars' cataclysmic action, possibly of direct influence in man's destiny on the earth."

Proctor the Astronomer

1874

Ten years ago, the name of Richard Anthony Proctor was absolutely unknown; five years later, it was familiar in scientific circles in London, but comparatively unheard of outside; and today it is familiar as household words to every educated man in England, and to many thousands in this country.

Yet, the man who in so brief a space has conquered fame, and attracted the respectful admiration of astronomers in both hemispheres, is only thirty-six years old now, and did not begin to study astronomy till he had passed his five-and-twentieth year. Barely eight summers have flown since his maiden work appeared, and in the interval he has contributed a score of volumes to the library of science, some of them profound, many of them entirely original, and all of them thoroughly elevating and purely philosophic in tone.

In addition to these works, Mr. Proctor has written constantly and voluminously in most of the leading English periodicals, and has fought successfully more than one brilliant and stoutly contested battle with some of the oldest and ablest savans in Europe. Notably was this the case in his memorable struggle with the venerable Astronomer Royal of England, Sir George Airy, who had achieved a world-wide reputation, and had published seven or eight of the nine quarto volumes of his Astronomical Observations, before his young antagonist was born.

The dispute in question arose out of the widely divergent views set forth, upon the one hand, by Airy, and, upon the other, by Proctor, as to the manner in which the approaching Transit of Venus might be utilized to the best advantage. Sir George Airy, having originally, by an unfortunate choice, adopted the approximate process in dealing with the abstruse calculations involved in the working out of this delicate problem, had been strongly advised by Mr. Proctor, so far back as 1869, to adopt by preference the exact process. Delisle's method having been selected by Airy for the Transit of Venus in 1874, his keen-eyed critic at once pointed out that Halley's method was in every way to be preferred, whereas in regard to the next Transit — that of 1882 — Delisle's would be better than Halley's.

He farther insisted, from the first, that the Astronomer Royal, in his selection of points of observation in Hindostan, had overlooked many of the most desirable. And the young astronomer was right in both instances, as is shown by the fact that the leading astronomers of England at their last meeting, in session at the Board of Visitation of Greenwich Observatory, were unanimous in urging the Government to adopt the suggestions made by Proctor four years before.

This is but one out of many similar instances which might be cited of the extraordinary courage, keenness of perception and farsightedness of this the youngest, and, in some respects, the most brilliant, of living astronomers. — Scribner's Magazine.

Who Loves Not The Star? (poetry)

1878

WHO LOVES NOT THE STAR?

Who loves not the Star-light,
Which gladdens the night
And makes the world happy
With heaven's bright rays?

Oh, who shuns the Star-light
Which God freely sends,
To bless and to prosper
His foes and his friends?

Is there a poor mortal
Self prisoned somewhere,
Far from the warm Star-light
And heaven's pure air?

Where glitters the purple,
With gold spangled o'er,
And rich colored carpets
Bedizen the floor.

Where gas rays alone
Flicker dim, like the lights
Oft seen in a church-yard
On foul murky nights.

And curtains hang over
The windows, like clouds
Which blacken the heavens,
Or like ghastly shrouds

That covers the forms
Of the dead and decayed,
Oh such, while they live,
Are in graves ready-made!

Oh then, the bright Star-light
To me freely give,
With beams all celestial
As long as I live.

Yes, when I am buried,
'Twill be time enough quite,
To draw the tomb's curtain
And shut off the light.

—Daily Star, Marion, Ohio, Jan. 10, 1878, p. 1.

Uncle Sam Regulates Clocks, Time By Fixed Star

1903

HOW TIME IN THE U.S. IS MADE.

Our Uncle Samuel Always Regulates His Clocks by a Fixed Star.

Strange as it may seem, Uncle Sam does not make use of the sun for reckoning time, but, as already described in St. Nicholas, he turns his attention to some of the regular, steady-going stars, or "fixed stars," as they are called.

Every clear night an astronomer with a big telescope looks at certain of these stars and makes his calculations, from which he can tell just when the sun would cross the seventy-fifth meridian. One of the great clocks in the observatory is called the transmitter or sends out the signal that keeps standard time. This clock is set and regulated by the star time, and then every day at three minutes and fifteen seconds before 12 a switch is turned on and the beats of the pendulum of this clock are sent by electricity over the wires to the telegraph offices in Washington and New York.

When the telegraph operators hear this sound on their instruments they know that the noon signal is about to be sent out, and they at once begin to connect the telegraph wires with other towns and cities, until in a minute or two the "tick, tick" of the clock at Washington is heard in hundreds of telegraph offices. The beats stop at ten seconds before 12 as a notice that the next "tick" will be the noon signal, and so as to give the operators time to connect their wires with the standard timeballs and clocks.

There are timeballs in a great many cities — usually on top of some prominent building, where they can easily be seen. The one at Washington is on the roof of the state, war, and navy department building, at the top of a high pole, ready to drop the instant the signal comes over the wire.

In the government offices at Washington and in many places in other cities there are large clocks connected with the observatory by electricity. These are so arranged that when the 12 o'clock signal is flashed over the wires the hands of each one of these clocks spring to 12, no matter what time the clock may show; in this way hundreds of clocks are set to the correct time each day.

Well, the moment the sun is supposed to cross the 75th meridian, the telegraph instruments give a single tick, the timeballs drop, the clocks begin to strike, and everybody in the district knows it is 12 o'clock. — Clifford Howard in St. Nicholas.

—Davenport Daily Republican, Davenport, Iowa, March 5, 1903, page 2.

Comment: So the famous "ball" that drops on New Year's Eve, is that a "timeball" and does it come from this way of regulating clocks?

Trouble In Store Fer This Ol' Country

Atlanta, Georgia, 1906
----------
"Uncle Billy" -- Philosopher.

"Yes, sir," said old "Uncle" Billy, who comes in occasionally with country produce, via the East Point road, "I shore do see wonders in the sky these cool November nights. Only last night I seen sixteen stars fall -- all at one time, an' one of 'em come so clost to me my hat wuz knocked one-sided, an' a hole burnt in the brim. Night before that, whilst I wuz a-surveyin' of the heavens -- so to speak -- I seen a perfect pictur' of a sword, just 'bout where the moon would 'a' ben at that time, ef she hadn't been late; then there wuz a big crack in the sky, like a winder-shutter suddenly throwed wide open, an' I hearn sweet singin', an' harp-playin', most distinct. Oh, there's wonderful things goin' on above you that you don't know nuthin' about -- I tell you! An' there's trouble in store fer this ol' country, shore's you're born. You'd better hold yer cotton fer 10 cents an' better. An' do you want any fresh eggs this mornin', at 30 cents?"

--The Atlanta Constitution, Atlanta, Georgia, November 9, 1906, page 6.