Musca Borealis, the Northern Fly, the small group of 31⁄2- to 5th-magnitude stars over the back of the Ram, is the Italian Mosca, the French Mouche, and the German Fliege. Houzeau attributed its formation to Habrecht, but others to Bartschius, who called it Vespa, the Wasp, although also Apis, the Bee; and, still further changing the figure, wrote that it represented Beel-zebul, the god of flies, the Phoenician Baal-zebub; this insect being the ideograph of that heathen divinity, varied at times by the Scarabaeus. La Lande's Apes probably is a typographical error. To whom we owe its present title I cannot learn; but it is thus given in the Flamsteed Atlas of 1781. The constellation has been retained in some popular astronomical works, although not figured by the scientific Argelander, Heis, nor Klein, nor recognized in the British Association Catalogue. Ptolemy included its stars in the five duópowrot of his Kptóc, the Ram. Its chief components, Fl. 41, 33, 35, and 39 of Aries, were common to the 28th nakshatra, Barani, Bearer, or Apha Barani,-Yama, the ruler of the spirit world, being the presiding divinity; Fl. 35 being the junction star towards the nakshatra Krittikā. They also formed the sieu Oei or Wei, anciently Vij; and the manzil Buṭain. But as these Chinese and Arabic titles, signifying Belly, i. e. of the Ram, do not coincide with the present location of the stars, we may infer a change from the earlier drawings of Aries. Al Tizini's Nā'ir al Buṭain, the Bright One of the Little Belly, probably was 41, a 3.6-magnitude. These same stars, μ being added, were the Persian lunar station Pish Parvis, the Sogdian Barv, the Khorasmian Farankhand, the Forerunners, and the Coptic Koleōn, the Belly, or Scabbard. Flamsteed's 41, 35, and 39 formed another of the Arabs' Athāfiyy. Musca comes to the meridian on the 17th of December. Instead of the Fly, Royer figured here, in 1679, the Lily, le Lis or le Fleur de Lis, with the French coat of arms, but this has entirely passed out of the books and maps. Noctua, the Night Owl, has been added by some modern to the already overweighted Hydra. It is shown by Burritt perched upon the extreme tail-tip of that figure, but encroaching on the boundary of the Southern Scale. Its location formerly was occupied by Le Monnier's Solitaire, but neither of these asterisms is now recognized. Norma et Regula, the Level and Square, originally was composed of some unformed stars of Ara and Lupus, within the branches of the Milky Way, just north of Apus; but later it became the Southern Triangle of Theodor and Bayer. According to Ideler, it was altered by La Caille to its present form, and associated with a Pair of Compasses, the constellation Circinus, next to it on the north, adjoining the fore feet of the Centaur. Modern astronomers, however, call it simply Norma, and locate it as an entirely distinct constellation to the north of and adjoining the Triangle. It is sometimes given as Quadra Euclidis, Euclid's Square, not Quadrant as it often is incorrectly translated. The French edition of Flamsteed's Atlas of 1776 has it as Niveau, the Level; and Houzeau cites Libella of the same meaning; but in France it now is l'Équerre et la Règle; in Italy, Riga e Squadra; and in Germany, Lineal or Winkelmass. Norma contains 64 naked-eye stars, from 4.6 to 7th magnitudes, but none seem to be named. They culminate about the 4th of July, their northern limit 15° south from the star Antares, and so are visible only in low latitudes. La Caille's a Normae lies within the present limits of our Scorpio. In Norma appeared in 1893 a 7th-magnitude nova detected by Mrs. Margaret Fleming on a photograph taken on the 1st of July at the Harvard Observatory's station near Arequipa, although it never was visually observed. Special interest attaches to it from the identity of its spectrum with that of the nova Aurigae of the preceding year, the first two of their kind discovered. The appearance of two new stars at such a short interval is also noticeable, as Miss Clerke says that only about eighteen had been recorded since the days of Hipparchos; Professor Young reducing this to eleven ast certainly known down to 1892; but observers have greatly increased in recent years, the heavens are better known than formerly, and the camera shows what the eye, aided even by the best telescope, cannot,— all factors in the problem of the detection of these strangers. The photographs retain impressions of thousands of stars, while the visual observer practically is limited to a few hundred. Mubeculae Magellani, the Magellanic Clouds, were the Cape Clouds of the earliest navigators, being the prominent heavenly objects seen as they neared the Cape of Good Hope; but after Magellan became noted and fully described them, they took and have retained his name. The Latin word is the diminutive of nubes, and literally signifies "the Little Clouds." Miss Mitchell alluded to them as the Magellan Patches; and Smyth, as the Sacks of Coals of English navigators; but the latter term generally has been applied to the darkly vacant spaces in the Milky Way near the Northern and the Southern Cross, and to one near the Robur Carolinum. Although Bayer seems to have been the first to figure them, they were thus mentioned by Peter Martyr in Eden's Decades: Coompasinge abowte the poynt thereof, they myght see throughowte al the heaven about the same, certeyne shynynge whyte cloudes here and there amonge the starres, like unto theym whiche are seene in the tracte of heaven cauled Lactea via, that is the mylke whyte waye: and by Corsali: [We] sawe manifestly twoo clowdes of reasonable bygnesse movynge abowt the place of the pole continually now rysynge and now faulynge, so keepynge theyr continuall course in circular movynge, with a starre ever in the myddest which is turned abowt with them abowte .xi. degrees frome the pole. This star is y Hydri, a 3.2-magnitude red, now 15° from the pole. According to Ellis, the Polynesian Islanders called the clouds Mahu, Mist, distinguishing them as Upper and Lower; and Gill, in his stories of the natives of the Hervey group, cited their somewhat similar Nga Maū. Russell's photographs, taken at Sydney in 1890, show them to be spiral in formation, each with two centres of condensation, and, as Doctor William Whewell wrote in his Plurality of Worlds, composed of "masses of stars, clusters of stars, nebulae regular and irregular, and nebulous streaks and patches." The space around them is very blank, especially in the case of the Minor, "as if the cosmical material in the neighborhood had been swept up and garnered in these mighty groups." Together they serve to show the location of the pole, marking two angles of a nearly equilateral triangle, of which the polar point is the third. Mubecula Major, the Greater Cloud, Nubes Major with Royer, is the Italian Nube Maggiore, the French Grand Nuage, and the German Grosse Wolke. It lies in the constellations Dorado and Mons Mensae, 20° from the south pole, covering an irregular space in the sky of about forty-two square degrees; but the intensity of its light is inferior to that of the Lesser Cloud and is obliterated by the full moon. According to Flammarion, it contains 291 distinct nebulae, 46 clusters, and 582 stars. Al Sufi mentioned it as Al Bakr, the White Ox, of the southern Arabs, and invisible from Baghdad, or northern Arabia, but visible from the parallel of the Strait of Babd al Mandab, in 12° 15′ of north latitude. Ideler translated this as the Oxen of Tehama,- Tehama being a province on the Red Sea; this title probably includes the companion cloud. Julius Schiller combined it with Dorado and Piscis Volans in his biblical figure Abel the Just. Mubecula minor, the Lesser Cloud, Nubes Minor with Royer, is the Nube Minore of the Italians, the Petit Nuage of the French, and the Kleine Wolke of the Germans. It lies within the borders of Hydrus and Tucana, with which Julius Schiller fashioned it into the archangel Raphael. According to Flammarion, it contains 37 nebulae, 7 clusters, and 200 stars, and covers about ten square degrees, the immediately surrounding space being almost devoid of stars, or, as Sir John Herschel wrote, "most oppressively desolate,” and access to it on all sides "is through a desert." Close to it, between 7 Hydri and Tucanae, is the centre of the constellational vacancy of 2400 to 2000 B. C., marking the place of the south pole of that date. now known simply as Octans, was formed and published by La Caille in 1752 in recognition of the octant invented in 1730 by John Hadley. It is the French Octant, the German Oktant, and the Italian Ottante. The French edition of Flamsteed's Atlas has it as l'Octans Réflexion. Gould assigns to it 88 naked-eye stars down to the 7th magnitude; the brightest, v, being only of 3.8; but the constellation is noteworthy as marking the south pole, its 5.8-magnitude σ being about 3/4 of a degree away. A straight line from a Crucis to ẞ Hydri almost touches the pole at 3 of the distance from the latter star. Ancient references to a south pole are of course infrequent; Ovid, however, makes Phoebus allude to it in his instructions to Phaëthon; Vergil mentions it as in our motto; Creech thus renders from Manilius : the lower pole resemblance bears To this above, and shines with equal Stars; and Pliny tells us that the Hindus had given it a name, Dramasa,— Austrinum Polum Indi Dramasa vocant. The heathen Arabs, too, seem to have had some knowledge of it, for they imagined that, like its northern counterpart, it exercised a healing power on all afflicted persons who would attentively observe it. The early navigators commented more or less correctly on the blankness of the heavens in this region, and Peter Martyr wrote: They knewe no starre there lyke unto this pole, that myght be decerned aboute the poynte; Pigafetta, in his description of the Magellanic Clouds: Betweene these, are two starres not very bigge, nor much shyninge, which move a little: and these two are the pole Antartike, probably the colored stars ẞ and y Hydri of about the 3d magnitude; and Camões: Vimos a parte menos rutilante, E por falta d'estrellas menos bella |