a power of one hundred diameters, which
exhibits it as a minute elliptical ring, rather misty, very soft and
delicate, and yet distinct, we increase the magnification first to two
hundred and finally to three hundred, in order to distinguish a little
better some of the details of its shape. Upon the whole, however, we
find that the lowest power that clearly brings out the ring gives the
most satisfactory view. The circumference of the ring is greater than
that of the planet Jupiter. Its ellipticity is conspicuous, the length
of the longer axis being 78" and that of the shorter 60". Closely
following the nebula as it moves through the field of view, our
five-inch telescope reveals a faint star of the eleventh or twelfth
magnitude, which is suspected of variability. The largest instruments,
like the Washington and the Lick glasses, have shown perhaps a dozen
other stars apparently connected with the nebula. A beautiful sparkling
effect which the nebula presents was once thought to be an indication
that it was really composed of a circle of stars, but the spectroscope
shows that its constitution is gaseous. Just in the middle of the open
ring is a feeble star, a mere spark in the most powerful telescope. But
when the Ring Nebula is photographed--and this is seen beautifully in
the photographs made with the Crossley reflector on Mount Hamilton by
the late Prof. J. E. Keeler--this excessively faint star imprints its
image boldly as a large bright blur, encircled by the nebulous ring,
which itself appears to consist of a series of intertwisted spirals.

Not far away we find a difficult double star, 17, whose components are
of magnitudes six and ten or eleven, distance 3.7", p. 325 deg..

From Lyra we pass to Cygnus, which, lying in one of the richest parts of
the Milky Way, is a very interesting constellation for the possessor of
a telescope. Its general outlines are plainly marked for the naked eye
by the figure of a cross more than twenty degrees in length lying along
the axis of the Milky Way. The foot of the cross is indicated by the
star beta, also known as Albireo, one of the most charming of all the
double stars. The three-inch amply suffices to reveal the beauty of this
object, whose components present as sharp a contrast of light yellow and
deep blue as it would be possible to produce artificially with the
purest pigments. The magnitudes are three and seven, distance 34.6", p.
55 deg.. No motion has been detected in