Word: novas
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Such a one was Nova Herculis, the famed "new star" of 1934. After its first brilliant flare-up, this nova dropped below naked-eye visibility, down to the 13th magnitude, then recovered to magnitude 6.7, where it remained fairly steady for months. Late in 1936, astronomer David Belorizky of the National Observatory at Marseille, France, noticed that certain lines of the nova's spectrum were double. If a source of light is approaching, its spectrum lines are shifted to one side; if receding, to the other side. Therefore the doubling of the Nova Herculis lines indicated motions both toward...
Although it has long been known that the same species of shrimp found in Norway is to be found also along the coast of North America from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia, fishermen have not generally known of its abundance, or, knowing it, have not attempted to develop a market. Consequently when Dr. Hjort came here last year as a guest of Harvard, and also of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (of which Professor H. B. Bigelow is director), he set about at once to learn whether the shrimps are as abundant here as they are in Europe...
...surface temperature, as against the sun's 6,000°. In the closing months of last year astronomers noted curious fluctuations in the quality and quantity of light from Gamma, which may be throbbing indicators that it is preparing to burst forth as a nova...
...Novae, or "new stars," are stars which, because of some unknown unbalance, flare up in a gigantic explosion, throw out hundreds of thousands of times as much heat and light as before, sling off shells of hot gas, subside at last to something like their former status. Close study of a nova during 1935 showed three shells of gas expanding...
...Nova Aquilae became the brightest star in the night sky, but it started from below the eleventh magnitude. Famed Nova Herculis of 1934 became one of the twelve brightest stars, but it started from the 14th magnitude. If Gamma becomes a nova, starting from the first or second magnitude, it will be brilliantly visible in broad daylight. And imaginative persons have suggested that the outpouring of injurious ultraviolet radiation may be so strong that human beings would have to carry umbrellas coated with lead before venturing under the glare of "Nova Cassiopeiae." Other highlights of the astronomers' convention...