picturesque description of its
color has frequently been quoted. He said it is "of the most intense
crimson, resembling a blood-drop on the black ground of the sky." It is
important to remember that this star is reddest when faintest, so that
if we chance to see it near its maximum of brightness it will not
impress us as being crimson at all, but rather a dull, coppery red. Its
spectrum indicates that it is smothered with absorbing vapors, a sun
near extinction which, at intervals, experiences an accession of energy
and bursts through its stifling envelope with explosive radiance, only
to faint and sink once more. It is well to use our largest aperture in
examining this star.

We may also employ the five-inch for an inspection of the double star
iota, whose chief component of the fifth magnitude is beautifully tinged
with green. The smaller companion is very faint, eleventh magnitude, and
the distance is about 13", p. 337 deg..

Another fine double in Lepus is kappa, to be found just below iota; the
components are of the fifth and eighth magnitudes, pale yellow and blue
respectively, distance 2.5", p. 360 deg.; the third-magnitude star alpha has
a tenth-magnitude companion at a distance of 35", p. 156 deg., and its
neighbor beta (map No. 2), according to Burnham, is attended by three
eleventh-magnitude stars, two of which are at distances of 206", p. 75 deg.,
and 240", p. 58 deg., respectively, while the third is less than 3" from
beta, p. 288 deg.; the star gamma (map No. 2) is a wide double, the distance
being 94", and the magnitudes four and eight. The star numbered 45 is a
remarkable multiple, but the components are too faint to possess much
interest for those who are not armed with very powerful telescopes.

[Illustration: MAP NO. 2.]

From Lepus we pass to Canis Major (map No. 2). There is no hope of our
being able to see the companion of alpha (Sirius), at present (1901),
even with our five-inch. Discovered by Alvan Clark with an eighteen-inch
telescope in 1862, when its distance was 10" from the center of Sirius,
this ninth-magnitude star has since been swallowed up in the blaze of
its great primary. At first, it slightly increased its distance, and
from 1868 until 1879 most of the measures made by different observers
considerably exceeded 11". Then it began to close up, and in 1890 the
distance scarcely exceeded 4". Burnham was the last to catch sight of it
with the Lick telescope in that year. After that no