THE SOUTHERN CROSS.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1721, 11 April 1913, Page 3

THE SOUTHERN CROSS.

WONDERS OF THE SKIES. LECTURE BY MISS PROCTOR. Miss Mary Proctor, member of tho British Astronomical Association, who is touring New Zealand delivering lectures with tho object of raising funds to erect a solar physics observatory in New Zealand, and also of interesting the people of this country in the project, delivered a popular lecture on the Southern Cross andother wonders of the southern skies in the Oriental Bay Hall last night. There were about -100 people in the audience. Sir Robert Stout presided and introduced the lecturer and her subject, referring incidentally lo tho visit of Miss Proctor's father to New Zealand many veal's ago, and the interest his visit had stimulated in astronomy. Miss Procios spoke first of. the need for more exhaustive and complete research work in solar physics,. and of the value such work would probably prove to be 'if it should be established, conclusively that sun storms are followed by magnetic storms on earth. All through tho lecture she used lantern slides freely, aud sho had a few phonographs of sun-spots, mere dark patches on the luminuus disc ot' tho sun as. seen through a telescope. Miss Proctor spoke of the enormous cavities lorn in the gaseous surface of the sun by these cyclonic disturbances—great rents in which the earth could easily be placed. 11l order that any valuable work might be accomplished in solar physics research it was necessary, she said, that tlie sun should be observed continuously, and to make this possible an observatory would have to bo established to bridge the gap between-the observatory in India and the observatory in California. 'The main .portion of Miss Proctor's leciuro, however, concerned the .S'.inthem Cross, and the other glories of-the heavens visible from these southern lands. She had been startled and delighted, she said, with the brilliancy of (he stars of the CroSs, and indeed with all the bright stars in our skies. It seemed to her that, possibly because of our clearer air, the lights of the heavens seemed so much brighter, and . she was sure more stars were visible to the naked eye. She had photographs of all the features of our skies, and she i'.pcke of them all—some of the brightest luminaries, some of which were not single bodies but groups of stars, often of different colours, of brilliant ,star clusters containing thousands of suns, shedding light perhaps oy n-orlds such as ours, of the coal-sack, that mysterious (lark patch in tho sky in which there are apparently no stars at all, but in which the stars are only too distant to be sfcen, and of the glorious nebulae, in which tho stars shone through clouds of glistening gas, or tho glowing star mist from which worlds are made.. Of these wonders Miss Proctor talked, showing her intimate knowledge of them all, and her zeal and enthusiasm for the study of them.