Sky Men

In the northern sky, on the other side of the Pole star from the Big Dipper, is a prominent, W-shaped constellation named Cassiopeia. The bright central star at the peak of the W is called Gamma Cassiopeiae. Of the second magnitude in brightness. Gamma is a hot blue body of some 25,000DEG C. surface temperature, as against the sun's 6,000DEG. In the closing months of last year astronomers noted curious fluctuations in the quality and quantity of light from Gamma, which may be throbbing indicators that it is preparing to burst forth as a nova.

Novae, or "new stars," are stars which, because of some unknown unbalance, flare up in a gigantic explosion, throw out hundreds of thousands of times as much heat and light as before, sling off shells of hot gas, subside at last to something like their former status. Close study of a nova during 1935 showed three shells of gas expanding at 250, 320 and 650 mi. per sec.

Last week at Hood College in Frederick, Md., Dr. Ernest Hurst Cherrington Jr. of Perkins Observatory (Delaware, Ohio) reported to fellow members of the American Astronomical Society that in October the star Gamma Cassiopeiae had increased in brightness from magnitude 2.25 to 1.60.

Since then a new line, probably caused by a known element in a highly excited energy state, had appeared in the red zone of the spectrum, and two sodium lines had increased in brightness, reaching a maximum in December and disappearing on Christmas Eve. On Christmas night there were new sodium lines. "I had to leave them to come here," said Dr. Cherrington. "I don't know what has been going on up there since." Some 40 novae have been found since 1900, but they were all much fainter and farther away than Gamma Cassiopeiae.

In 1918 Nova Aquilae became the brightest star in the night sky, but it started from below the eleventh magnitude. Famed Nova Herculis of 1934 became one of the twelve brightest stars, but it started from the 14th magnitude. If Gamma becomes a nova, starting from the first or second magnitude, it will be brilliantly visible in broad daylight. And imaginative persons have suggested that the outpouring of injurious ultraviolet radiation may be so strong that human beings would have to carry umbrellas coated with lead before venturing under the glare of "Nova Cassiopeiae." Other highlights of the astronomers' convention: Nos-- 60, 61, 62. In the sun hydrogen, helium, calcium, sodium, carbon, nitrogen, and many another terrestrial element have been identified by comparing the solar spectrum with very clear spectra of substances photographed in the laboratory.

Up to three years ago 58 solar elements had thus been recognized. Then Dr. Charlotte Emma Moore, 38-year-old Princeton astronomer, was able with the help of two colleagues to announce phosphorus as No.

59. Last week she announced Nos. 60, 61 and 62. the rare elements iridium (fountain pen points), osmium and thulium, found by Drs. Walter Albertson of M.I.T.

and William Frederick Meggers of the National Bureau of Standards. It is reasonable to suppose that the remaining 30 elements also occur in the sun.

Lopsided Planet. Eros is one of hundreds of asteroids (small planets) spinning around the sun as devotedly as if they were big planets. Mostly their orbits lie between Mars and Jupiter. The egg-shaped orbit of Eros, however, swings it far inside the Martian track and it is possible for it to approach within 14,000.000 miles of Earth. After its discovery in 1898. asteroid watchers noticed that sometimes Eros varied in brightness over a period of 5 1/4 hr. If this was the period of its rotation, the variation might have been due to one side being much darker than the other --or to the end-over-end spinning of an, object which was not spheroid like big planets but an irregular, elongated fragment.

In 1931 Eros swooped within 16,000,000 miles of Earth and two astronomers at Johannesburg were able to make out an elongation which changed in direction, completing a rotation in 5 hr. 17 min.

It was thus apparent that Eros was so small that its force of gravity was too weak to pull it into anything resembling a sphere. Last week Dr. Henry Norris Russell of Princeton, reading a paper for a Harvard colleague, gave the most probable dimensions of Eros as 22 miles long, seven miles across, and its shape as roughly cylindrical, with rounded ends.

Except for the meteors which plunge into Earth's atmosphere, the tiniest known body in the heavens is Anteros, a sort of "flying mountain" only one-third of a mile across which was discovered last February by Dr. E. Delporte of Belgium after it had approached within 2,000,000 miles.

When it was lost to sight it was receding at the rate of 1,000,000 miles per day.

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