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Even a small telescope will, however, show this to be the case, and this is the easiest and the first observation that a young astronomer should make when beginning to turn a telescope to the heavens. Of course you will not imagine that I mean Alcor to be the second component of the double star; it is the bright star near Alcor which is the double.
Beside Alcor, several fainter stars are seen scattered over the field of view, and, taken all in all, there are very few equally beautiful sights in the starry heavens.
Is not time a pretty toy? Life will show you masks that are worth all your carnivals. Yonder mountain must migrate into your mind. The fine star-dust and nebulous blur in Orion, "the portentous year of Mizar and Alcor," must come down and be dealt with in your household thought.
She goes to the fire and drops a pinch of tobacco into it, for incense to carry her message, then looking toward the sky she says: "Great Spirit, I thank Thee that my child has the eyes of a hunter." These things are not new, O Woodcrafter. The wise men of our race call the Big Star "Mizar" one of the chariot horses, and the little star "Alcor" or the Rider.
All of these approach the earth at the rate of about eighteen miles a second; and the fifth and faintest, Delta Ursæ, though not yet measured, may be held to share their advance. One of them, moreover, Zeta Ursæ, alias Mizar, carries with it three other stars Alcor, the Arab "Rider" of the horse, visible to the naked eye, besides a telescopic and a spectroscopic attendant.
The fact that the little star Alcor placed so close to Mizar should accompany the latter in its flight is not surprising, but that two of the principal stars of the group should be found moving in a direction directly opposed to that pursued by the other five is surprising in the highest degree; and it recalls the strange theory of a double drift affecting all the stars, to which attention was called in the preceding chapter.
Megrez is the faint star already mentioned at the junction of the bowl and handle, and Mizar, in the middle of the handle, has a close, naked-eye companion which is named Alcor. The Arabs called this singular pair of stars ``The Horse and Rider. Merak and Duhbe are called ``The Pointers, because an imaginary line drawn northward through them indicates the Pole Star.
If you look at his tail, which consists of three stars, you will see that near the middle one of the three a small star is situated; we call this little star Alcor, but it is the brighter one near Alcor to which I specially call your attention. The sharpest eye would never suspect that it was composed of two stars placed close together.
We come now to Ursa Major's principal attraction zeta, frequently called Mizar. The naked eye perceives near it a smaller star, named Alcor. With the three-inch glass and a medium power we divide Mizar into two bright stars brilliantly contrasted in color, the larger being white and the smaller blue-green.
I had carried to the Royal Astronomical Society the first successful photograph of a star. It was that of Mizar and Alcor, in the Great Bear. "The last time I saw Mrs. Somerville, she took me into her garden to show me her rose-bushes, in which she took great pride. Mrs. Somerville was not a mathematician only, she spoke Italian fluently, and was in early life a good musician.
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