PREFACE
Astronomy, it has been said, is the oldest and the noblest of the sciences. Yet it is one of the few sciences for which most present-day educators seem to find little, if any, room in their curriculum of study for the young, in spite of its high cultural value. It is, we are told, too abstruse a subject for the youthful student. This is doubtless true of theoretical or mathematical astronomy and the practical astronomy of the navigator, surveyor and engineer, but it is not true of general, descriptive astronomy. There are many different aspects of this many-sided science, and some of the simplest and grandest truths of astronomy can be grasped by the intelligent child of twelve or fourteen years of age.
Merely as a branch of nature study the child should have some knowledge of the sun, moon, stars and planets, their motions and their physical features, for they are as truly a part of nature as are the birds, trees and flowers, and the man, woman or child who goes forth beneath the star-lit heavens at night absolutely blind to the wonders and beauties of the universe of which he is a part, loses as much as the one who walks through field or forest with no thought of the beauties of nature that surround him.
The astronomer is the pioneer and explorer of today in realms unknown just as the pioneers and explorers of several centuries ago were to some extent astronomers as they sailed unknown seas and traversed unexplored regions. As the years pass by the astronomer extends more and more his explorations of the universe and brings back among the fruits of discovery measures of giant suns and estimates of the form and extent of the universe, views of whirling, seething nebulæ, mysterious dark clouds drifting through space, tremendous solar upheavals or glimpses of strangely marked surfaces of nearby planets.
In the following pages the author has endeavored to tell in words not beyond the comprehension of the average fourteen-year-old child something of the nature of the heavenly bodies. In Part I an effort is made to make the child familiar with the stars by indicating when and where they can be found in the early evening hours. In addition to identifying the principal constellations and their brightest stars by means of diagrams an attempt has been made to acquaint the child with the most interesting recent discoveries that have been made concerning the principal stars or objects in each group as well as with some of the stories and legends that have been associated with these groups of stars for centuries, and that have been handed down in the folk-lore of all nations.
Chapters 2-13, inclusive, appeared originally with diagrams similar to those shown here, under the department of Nature and Science for Young Folk in St. Nicholas from May, 1921, to April, 1922, inclusive. The Introductory Chapter and Chapters 14 and 15, on the Milky Way and Stars of the Southern Hemisphere, respectively, are published here for the first time, as is also the chapter in Part II on the Evolution of the Stars from Red Giants to Red Dwarfs, which gives the order of the evolution of the stars as now accepted as a result of the brilliant astronomical researches of Dr. Henry Norris Russell of the United States and Prof. A. S. Eddington, of England.
The remaining chapters in Part II have been chosen from a series of articles that have appeared in Science and Invention, formerly The Electrical Experimenter, in the past four years, and have been considerably revised and in some parts rewritten to adapt them to the understanding of more youthful readers. These chapters deal with a variety of astronomical subjects of general popular interest and an effort has been made to select subjects that would cover as wide an astronomical field as possible in a limited space.
The author's aim has not been to write a text-book of astronomy or to treat in detail of any one aspect of this extensive science, but simply to give the average child some general knowledge of the nature of the heavenly bodies, both those that form a part of our own solar system and those that lie in the depths of space beyond.
It has been necessary to write very briefly, and we feel inadequately, of many topics of special interest such as the sun and moon. Books have been written on these two subjects alone as well as upon such subjects as Mars, eclipses, comets, meteors, etc., but the object has been to acquaint the child with the outstanding features of a variety of celestial objects rather than to treat of a few in detail.
If the writer succeeds in arousing the child's interest in the stars so that he may look forth with intelligence at the heavens and greet the stars as friends and at the same time grasps some of the simplest and most fundamental of astronomical truths such as the distinction between stars and planets, the motions of the heavenly bodies and their relative distances from us and the place of our own planet-world in the universe, this book will have served its purpose.
ASTRONOMY FOR YOUNG FOLKS
"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork."
Psalm XIX.