In the catalogues of Ptolemy, Tycho Brahe, and Hevelius, eight stars are mentioned; but recent uranographic surveys have greatly increased this number. The motions of individual stars, it is true, vary widely, but if the mean motion of a number of stars is considered this tendency is always to be found. Ursae majoris is perhaps the best known double star in the northern hemisphere, the larger component is itself a spectroscopic double.

The greatest displacement of the star from its mean position (the semi-axis major of the ellipse) is called its parallax.

The two components of double stars often exhibit complementary colours. He began journalism, through the influence of William Archer, on the reviewing staff of the Pall Mall Gazette in 1885; he then became art and musical critic: writing from 1888 to 1890 for the Star, where his articles were signed "Corno di Bassetto," and then in 1890 to 1894 for the World. Hence, however carefully a compass may be placed and subsequently compensated, the mariner has no safety without constantly observing the bearings of the sun, stars or distant terrestrial objects, to ascertain its deviation. He made a great number of observations of stars with proper motion. They bear a relation to the Platonic solids similar to the relation of " star polygons " to ordinary regular polygons, inasmuch as the centre is multiply enclosed in the former and singly in the latter. The stars had been numbered and named at an early date, and we possess tables of lunar longitudes and observations of the phases of Venus.

353), with which he measured the relative brightness of 2784 stars between the North Pole and about - so declination. Recently the proper motions of faint stars have been determined by comparing photographs of the same region of the sky, taken with an interval of a number of years. Let's pick her while we have the chance, before the man with the star comes back.

The superfluous asterism, named Abhijit, included the bright star a Lyrae, under whose influence the gods had vanquished the Asuras.

For stellar parallaxes see Star; the solar parallax is discussed below. Star; (iv.)

The scene of the future life may be thought of on earth, in some distant part of it, or above the earth, in the sky, sun, moon or stars, or beneath the earth. In her grief at the destruction of the city she plucked out her hair and was changed into a comet; in another version Electra and her six sisters had been placed among the stars as the Pleiades, and the star which she represented lost its brilliancy after the fall of Troy. The first was a circlet of " full moons "; the second marked the diurnal stages of the lunar progress round the sky, from and back again to any selected star. On the different days of the year each hour was determined by a fixed star culminating or nearly culminating in it, and the position of these stars at the time is given in the tables as in the centre, on the left eye, on the right shoulder, &c. According to the texts, in founding or rebuilding temples the north axis was determined by the same apparatus, and we may condude that it was the usual one for astronomical observations. Referring to special articles, Solar System, Star, Sun, MooN, &c. for a description of the various parts of the universe, we confine ourselves, at present, to setting forth a few of the most general modern conceptions of the universe. An illustration of the star of the grand cross is given on Plate V. The badge is an oval star with eight points, enamelled half red and white, dependent from a gold imperial crown. Annual parallax is the angle between the direction in which a star appears from the earth and the direction in which it appears from the centre of the sun. He had no lambskin cap on his head, nor had he a loaded whip over his shoulder, as when Rostov had seen him on the eve of the battle of Austerlitz, but wore a tight new uniform with Russian and foreign Orders, and the Star of St. George on his left breast. Lime is, in fact, absorbed to an enormous extent by fishes, molluscs, crustacea, calcareous algae and sponges, starfishes, sea-urchins and feather stars, many polyzoa and a multitude of protozoa (mainly the foraminifera).

The accounts of the observations given in these papers, however, were fragmentary; but in 1879-80 a complete account of them was published by the present earl ("Observations of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars made with the 6-foot and 3-foot Reflectors at Birr Castle from 1848 to 1878") in the Scient. In 1797 she presented to the Royal Society an Index to Flamsteed's observations, together with a catalogue of 561 stars accidentally omitted from the "British Catalogue," and a list of the errata in that publication.