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This process of rolling out involves, it is true, much loss of light a scanty and precious commodity, as coming from the stars; but the loss is an inevitable one. And so fully is it compensated by the great light-grasping power of modern telescopes that important information can now be gained from the spectroscopic examination of stars far below the range of the unarmed eye.
We can never see a star to be a globe with marks on it like the moon, or like one of the planets in fact, the better the telescope the smaller does the star seem, though, of course, its brightness is increased with every addition to the light-grasping power of the instrument. The Brightness and Color of Stars.
Lord Rosse's telescope was specially suited for the scrutiny of these objects, inasmuch as their delicacy required all the light-grasping power which could be provided. One of the greatest discoveries made by Lord Rosse, when his huge instrument was first turned towards the heavens, consisted in the detection of the spiral character of some of the nebulous forms.
Every improvement in light-grasping power brings millions of new stars into the range of instrumental vision and shows the "background" of the sky blazing with the light of eye-invisible suns too far away to be separately distinguished. Great strides are daily being made in stellar photography.
Two pleasing little doubles are Sigma 2101, magnitudes six and nine, distance 4", p. 57°, and Sigma 2104, magnitudes six and eight, distance 6", p. 20°. At the northern end of the constellation is 42, a double that requires the light-grasping power of our largest glass.
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