IN OUTER SPACE.

Shannon News, 30 March 1928, Page 3

IN OUTER SPACE.

COSMIC BEING ENACTED CAPETOWN, March 27.

The staff of th'e Union Observatory ( at Johannesburg record a- remarkable, j observation last-.week. . ■ .

Senor Bernard Dawson, of La Plata Observatory, ' Argentina, reported the star, , Nova Pieioris, looking strange and he was unable properly to study It with his .small telescope. He therefore asked "Johannesburg to make an examination of it through Its 26-J-inch telescope. ~ ■ This has been done by various members of the staff, andvit lias been-dis-covered that the star is split in ;two. Mr Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal at the Captown Observatory, states that it is wrong to say the star is split in iwo. There are two stars now and were two stars before) although we did not know that Nova Pictoris belongs to. the class'of. star which blaze up rapidly in tlie course of a few days from below naked-eye visibility to very brilliant visibility.

The state of Hie two stars now visible seems to show that thpv are due to a collision between two Bars or the grazing impact of twp sia My Jones judges the distance between the two stars to be one-fifth" of a second of an arc. .

He thinks it possible this is the first direct evidence of a' collision or grazing impact of stars. The origin of our solar system is the direct, result of an incidentally similar occurrence in the nebula. , r, ; ,

Consequent on the outburst in Pictcris the Constellation may condense into'planets and form another solar system where life may evolve.