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This celebrated star, first seen by Tycho Brahe in the constellation Cassiopeia, never changed its position, or presented the slightest perceptible parallax. It could not therefore have been a meteor, nor a planet regularly revolving round the sun, nor a comet blazing with fiery nebulous light, nor a satellite of one of the planets, but a fixed star, far beyond our solar system.
My teacher first read the passage carefully over, explaining each idea intended to be conveyed, and at the conclusion turned to an assistant, and remarked that 'with Cassiopeia for a model, he wondered chairs were not earlier constructed. I wondered in silence what that hard word could signify, and at length summoned courage to ask an explanation.
High over the cupola Cassiopeia leaned toward the pole, her breast flashing its eternal badge the star-pointed W. Low in the north as the country tale went tied to follow her emotions, externally separate, eternally true to the fixed star of her gaze, the Waggoner tilted his wheels and drove them close and along and above the misty sea.
"I never saw that huge W before " said Peter. "You don't mean Cassiopeia? Her chair isn't there, but over to the north " "No, no there. Rigel, the upper right corner, down to the left, the Dog-star; up to Betelguese, down to the left again to Procyon, and up to the brightest of all the stranger, not usually there " Spenski clutched him. "I was watching the bigger configuration, and didn't notice.
The Milky Way is mainly made up of thousands and thousands of small stars, and many more are revealed by the telescope; but, as we see in Cassiopeia, there are large bright stars in it too, though, of course, these may be infinitely nearer to us, and may only appear to us to be in the Milky Way because they are between us and it.
To the northeast and north the Sickle, the Goat and kids, Cassiopeia, Castor and Pollux, and the two Dippers. While through the whole of this silent indescribable show, inclosing and bathing my whole receptivity, ran the thought of Carlyle dying. And now that he has gone hence, can it be that Thomas Carlyle, soon to chemically dissolve in ashes and by winds, remains an identity still?
A rift in the clouds showed our friends of the midnight watch the Great Bear and Cassiopeia twinkling merrily as though it had never rained for a fortnight. I sloshed my way down to the far end of the trench. Pools of water lay ankle deep here and there along its length. Already one or two men, who had just come off sentry, had started to drain these into little catch-pools.
They all sat down on the steps nearest below me, and presently, beginning where I had begun with Sidney, I went on to point out the polar constellations and to relate the age-worn story of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, Andromeda and the divine Perseus. "Lawd, my Lawd !" whispered the mother, "was dey was dey colo'd?" I said two of them were king and queen of Ethiopia, and a third was their daughter.
Passing to the region covered by map No. 25, our eyes are caught by the curious figure, formed by the five brightest stars of the constellation Cassiopeia, somewhat resembling the letter W. Like Perseus, this is a rich constellation, both in star clusters and double stars.
There, too, sits Queen Cassiopeia in her dazzling chair, while the Great King, Cepheus, towers gigantic over the pole. Professor Young has significantly remarked that a great number of the constellations are connected in some way or other with the Argonautic Expedition that strangely fascinating legend of earliest Greek story which has never lost its charm for mankind.
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