coverers of the outburst in the Northern Crown. On November 24, at
the early hour of 5.41 in the evening (showing that Schmidt takes time
by the forelock at his observatory), he noticed a star of the third
magnitude in the constellation of the Swan, not far from the tail of
that southward-flying celestial bird. He is quite sure that on November
20, the last preceding clear evening, the star was not there. At
midnight its light was very yellow, and it was somewhat brighter than
the neighbouring star Eta Pegasi, on the Flying Horse's southernmost
knee (if anatomists will excuse my following the ordinary usage which
calls the wrist of the horse's fore-arm the knee). He sent news of the
discovery forthwith to Leverrier, the chief of the Paris observatory;
and the observers there set to work to analyse the light of the
stranger. Unfortunately the star's suddenly acquired brilliancy rapidly
faded. M. Paul Henry estimated the star's brightness on December 2 as
equal only to that of a fifth-magnitude star. Moreover, the colour,
which had been very yellow on November 24, was by this time 'greenish,
almost blue.' On December 2, M. Cornu, observing during a short time
when the star was visible through a break between clouds, found that the
star's spectrum consisted almost entirely of bright lines. On December
5, he was able to determine the position of these lines, though still
much interrupted by clouds. He found three bright lines of hydrogen, the
strong (really double) line of sodium, the (really triple) line of
magnesium, and two other lines. One of these last seemed to agree
exactly in position with a bright line belonging to the corona seen
around the sun during total eclipse.[35]

The star has since faded gradually in lustre until, at present, it is
quite invisible to the naked eye.

We cannot doubt that the catastrophe which befell this star is of the
same general nature as is that which befell the star in the Northern
Crown. It is extremely significant that all the elements which
manifested signs of intense heat in the case of the star in the Swan,
are characteristic of our sun's outer appendages. We know that the
coloured flames seen around the sun during total solar eclipse consist
of glowing hydrogen, and of glowing matter giving a line so near the
sodium line that in the case of a stellar spectrum it would, probably,
not be possible to distinguish one from the other. Into the prominences
there are thrown from time to