Heavenly Hubbub

Nova Pictoris, bright star of a comparatively younger generation, last week startled grave astronomers by unaccountable conduct. In Cape Town it was observed that two stars were shining where Nova Pictoris had shone alone. Discovered in 1925, the star had been behaving in orderly fashion, following the regular pattern of its ancestors: first a mass of fiery brilliant gases, then cooling, contracting, dimming. Recently the La Plata Observatory in Argentina reported strange doings in the nebula of the young star. When the Union of South Africa Observatory last week turned its great 26 inch telescope on Nova Pictoris and revealed another star by its side, some astronomers proclaimed that the star had split in two. English and American astronomers were skeptical. Splitting a star in two would require an impact from without or an explosion from within of a force unthinkably great. It has never happened before.

Novae, or new stars, are always happening along. They are new only from man's point of view, having existed long years before attaining the brightness which makes them visible through a telescope. But no other new star has behaved like Nova Pictoris. It may be that a terrific local explosion has occurred in part of the nebula making this area suddenly brilliant with a luminosity of its own, giving it the appearance of another star. Perhaps some dark invisible star has caromed into the gaseous globe, setting up a fiery fever at the place of injury. Or it may even be that Nova Pictoris always had a companion which remained modestly invisible at first, and is only now recognized as the brilliance of Nova Pictoris fades.