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Updated: September 19, 2025
If we are going, from merely counting the stars, observing their magnitudes and determining their proper motions, to draw conclusions as to the structure of the universe in space, the question may arise how we can form any estimate whatever of the possible distance of the stars, a conclusion as to which must be the very first step we take.
They form a binary system of unknown period. The magnitudes are two and a half and ten, distance 4.7", p. 140°. Its near neighbor, Sigma 2054, may be a binary. Its magnitudes are six and seven, distance 1", p. 0°. In Sigma 2323 we have another triple, magnitudes five, eight and a half, and seven, distances 3.6", p. 360°, and 90", p. 22°, colors white, blue, and reddish.
There are only two noteworthy doubles in that part of Ophiuchus with which we are at present concerned: 36, whose magnitudes are five and seven, distance 4.3", p. 195°, colors yellow and red; and 39, magnitudes six and seven and a half, distance 12", p. 356°, colors yellow or orange and blue. The first named is a binary whose period has not been definitely ascertained.
The uncommon stellar contrast of white with light garnet is exhibited by tau, magnitudes six and nine, distance 27", p. 115°. Yellow and blue occur again conspicuously in psi, magnitudes four and a half and eight and a half, distance 50", p. 310°. Rose and emerald have been recorded as the colors exhibited in Sigma 2998, whose magnitudes are five and seven, distance 1.3", p. 346°.
In the presence of its celestial magnitudes who is there who is really great or small, and what is the difference between you and me, my work and yours? I sought refuge in the idea of GOD, the God of a starry night with its incomprehensible distances; and I was at peace, content to be the meanest worm of all the millions that crawl on the earth.
Euclid, in his elements, considers only the relations of some of these magnitudes to each other, but does not compare them with surfaces and solids bounded by straight lines. Archimedes developed the proportions necessary for effecting this comparison, in his treatises on the sphere and cylinder, the spheroid and conoid, and in his work on the measure of the circle.
Thus, by charging a condenser by means of a battery, and discharging it a given number of times in a given interval of time, so that the effect of the current of discharge should be the same as the effect of the output of the battery through a given resistance, we could estimate, by the measurement of the electrical magnitudes, the duration of the interval noted.
In a geometrical demonstration we have a mental diagram, if not one on paper; AB, AC, are present to our imagination as lines, intersecting other lines, forming an angle with one another, and the like; but not so a and b. These may represent lines or any other magnitudes, but those magnitudes are never thought of; nothing is realized in our imagination but a and b.
The star 279, also known as Sigma 1910, near the southeastern edge of the constellation, is a pretty double, each component being of the seventh magnitude, distance 4", p. 212°. Just above zeta we come upon pi, an easy double for the three-inch, magnitudes four and six, distance 6" p. 99°. Next is xi, a yellow and purple pair, whose magnitudes are respectively five and seven, distance less than 3", p. 200°. This is undoubtedly a binary with a period of revolution of about a hundred and thirty years.
We begin in Hercules with the star kappa, a pretty little double of magnitudes five and a half and seven, distance 31", p. 10°, colors yellow and red. Not far away we find, in gamma, a larger star with a fainter companion, the magnitudes in this case being three and a half and nine, distance 38", p. 242°, colors white and faint blue or lilac.
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