NOVA AQUILA.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 June 1918, Page 7

NOVA AQUILA.

(By Rev. Oscar Blundell, M.8.A.A.) The new star's light is fading rapidly !.f? , mßgßltude - To the observer r ]«* th.s prodigious outburst in Z i heavens appears-^ so tiny indeed that it • | of all think of our own great sun, as it ■ Pours out its light and" heat "u 1 lit y i tß VMt «™«atioiial power, , night and frigidity of space. I is7f W cßntr !!. orb °f our system is of huge proportions we know vet fy°T 8 eW To Pe s t e t^ ine h ° W ** *2 ■ * n£ 6 hundred thousand earths I Snot 9 r6 - q f * t0 make «* does not assist us very much; yet it en/lv, * hls *? imagining the moon, from < t!% ab r t m ' m milM «■»«* from us), to be removed four times as far away Then imagine the sun a* Posing between the earth and the moonso separated, and there would only just be enough room for it to do soi Now ]et us further iniagi ne that this K-^ luminary of ours were to be hurried off in the direction of the new star m Aqulai. As our sun receded into space upon this tremendous journey, it WoH of course appear to diminish in size and we should receive less and less light from it. By the time it arrived at a pomt less than half way to where the new star is located, it would have got, so tmy and so dim that we should require a' telescope to enable us to see it and long before it reached the region from where the light from Nova Aquinla is so plainly visible, our poor sun could only be detected by means of the most powerful instruments. From this it will appear that the celestial outburst, which astonished the astrohomiI cat world so recently, and which from its appallingly distant location still shmes out clearly to our unaided vision must be of a magnitude such as baffle our utmost powers of imagination Its | ruddy color seems to indicate that the light we receive from it is not owin<" to its excessive brilliancy so much-as to its tremendous size, which not improbably occupies a space much larger than that represented by the orbit which the earth descibes lin its evolution round the sun.