Word: nebula
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Greeley Abbot, head of the Smithsonian Institution and world-famed authority on solar radiation, declared that if William Shakespeare had lived in the 20th Century he would have become an astronomer. One thing Astronomer Shakespeare would have had to get straight from the start is the different classes of nebulae. Astronomers apply nebula not only to whole galaxies of stars far beyond the Milky Way. but also to patches of dark or faintly luminous matter within the Milky Way, which is the home galaxy of earthlings. They may be distinguished by calling the local patches galactic nebulae, the great outer...
Many a blue nebula has been discovered, shining by light from a hot blue star. If the reflection theory is correct, red nebulae should also exist, with comparatively cool red stars as illuminators. Last August Russian-born, dimple-chinned Director Otto Struve of Yerkes Observatory announced discovery of the first known red nebula. It fans out from the red super giant star Antares to a distance of about two quadrillion miles...
Last week The Telescope, published by Harvard Observatory, pointed out that conclusions as to the size of the particles in this red nebula could be drawn from its color. If the nebular material were microscopically fine, the light of Antares would be reddened, just as the sun is reddened when it shines through a long slope of the hazy atmosphere at evening. Also, the light from the nebula would be made bluer by selective scattering of the same kind which makes the earth's sky blue.* Actually, the color of the star and that of the nebula are almost...
...cornfield near Delphos, Ohio, one evening last fortnight a 36-year-old amateur astronomer scrutinized the northern sky through his 6-in. telescope. Ten degrees from the North Star he spotted an unfamiliar object, below naked-eye visibility. At that location his charts showed no star, no nebula. Amateur Astronomer Leslie C. Peltier watched the tiny blob of light for five hours. In that time it moved sufficiently far to betray itself as a comet. To Harvard Observatory, whose officials knew his name very well, Peltier sent a telegram. One of Harvard's big telescopes swung up to confirm...
...Astronomers did not bother to name it but set it down by number, I. C. 342, in the Second Index Catalog (1895). With better cameras and telescopes I. C. 342 was found to have faint arms. Then these arms were seen to be tremendously long and spiraling. Later the nebula was revealed as much closer to Earth than at first believed, scarcely 1,000,000 light years away. It was marked now not as a blob, but as an island universe containing a billion or more stars. Finally, at Harvard, the diameter of this star-galaxy was measured at some...