e any one of our three
telescopes; but since we are going to look at a nebula, it is fortunate
that we have a glass so large as five inches aperture. It will reveal
interesting things that escape the smaller instruments, because it
grasps more than one and a half times as much light as the four-inch,
and nearly three times as much as the three-inch; and in dealing with
nebulae a plenty of light is the chief thing to be desired. The middle
star in the Sword is theta, and is surrounded by the celebrated Nebula
of Orion. The telescope shows theta separated into four stars arranged
at the corners of an irregular square, and shining in a black gap in the
nebula. These four stars are collectively named the Trapezium. The
brightest is of the sixth magnitude, the others are of the seventh,
seven and a half, and eighth magnitudes respectively. The radiant mist
about them has a faint greenish tinge, while the four stars, together
with three others at no great distance, which follow a fold of the
nebula like a row of buttons on a coat, always appear to me to show an
extraordinary liveliness of radiance, as if the strange haze served to
set them off.

[Illustration: THE TRAPEZIUM WITH THE FIFTH AND SIXTH STARS.]

Our three-inch would have shown the four stars of the Trapezium
perfectly well, and the four-inch would have revealed a fifth star, very
faint, outside a line joining the smallest of the four and its nearest
neighbor. But the five-inch goes a step farther and enables us, with
steady gazing to see even a sixth star, of only the twelfth magnitude,
just outside the Trapezium, near the brightest member of the quartet.
The Lick telescope has disclosed one or two other minute points of light
associated with the Trapezium. But more interesting than the Trapezium
is the vast cloud, full of strange shapes, surrounding it. Nowhere else
in the heavens is the architecture of a nebula so clearly displayed. It
is an unfinished temple whose gigantic dimensions, while exalting the
imagination, proclaim the omnipotence of its builder. But though
unfinished it is not abandoned. The work of creation is proceeding
within its precincts. There are stars apparently completed, shining like
gems just dropped from the hand of the polisher, and around them are
masses, eddies, currents, and swirls of nebulous matter yet to be
condensed, compacted, and constructed into suns. It is an education in
the nebular theory of the universe merely to look at t