Discoveries at the Lick Observatory
Discoveries at the Lick Observatory have been quite numerous, according to the report of the director, Dr. W. W. Campbell,—some very important ones through spectrographic observations. They think that they have proved that stars travel more rapidly the older they are. They have also proved that several hundred thousand nebulae, visible to the telescope or the camera, are waiting discovery, and also that most nebulae have a spiral form. They have also demonstrated that vast numbers of stars—which look like one, even to powerful telescopes—are either double, triple, or quadruple. Work with the spectroscope showed that at least one star in every four is double. The great star Capella, for instance, consists of two nearly equal in brightness, which revolve around their common center every 104 days. The north star is not a single star, but three stars, or three suns revolving about a common center. They feel that they have also shown that the “principal new stars which now and then blaze up in the heavens, only to fade away, have been converted into nebula.” How much of the nebula theory will fade away under future investigation is a problem.