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Updated: June 2, 2025
Thus the vast banners of the sun, shaken out in the eclipse, are signals to tell of its varying state, but it will probably be long before we can read correctly their messages. The Zodiacal Light Mystery
The Milky Way appeared to grow pale compared with the brilliancy of the zodiacal light; and if small, bluish, scattered clouds were accumulated toward the west, it seemed as if the moon were about to rise. I must here relate another very singular fact.
'Asking him, he says, 'to show me in the heavens the constellation Antarmada, he immediately pointed to Andromeda, though I had not given him any information about it beforehand. But probably both the Indian and the Greek constellation-figures were derived from a much older source. The zodiacal twelve are in some respects the most important and interesting of all the ancient constellations.
The name 'destructive rain' for the eleventh month is suggested by climatic conditions. Still obscure is the designation of the seventh month as the month of the 'resplendent mound, and so also is the designation of the second month. The calendar is thus shown to be the product of the same general order of religious ideas that we have detected in the zodiacal and planetary systems.
Perhaps Asgard, translated from mythic into scientific language, means the Zodiacal Light, and the Bridge Bifröst, the Milky Way. How curious, to trace in the grotesque mythic cosmogonies of India, Greece, and Scandinavia, modern geology, botany, chemistry, etc., the vast and brutal giants of the Eddas and other old mythic scriptures being recognized as impersonations of the forces of Nature!
Aristillus and Timocharis set up instruments and fixed the positions of the zodiacal stars, near to which all the planets in their orbits pass, thus facilitating the determination of planetary motions. He also found the sun's diameter, correctly, to be half a degree. He deduced the diameter of the earth, 250,000 stadia. Unfortunately, we do not know the length of the stadium he used.
It sinks with the four signs of Zodiac, there being six zodiacal signs divided in the whole night. That he has not gone through all observations of the stars, as Aratus or some of the others, need be surprising to no one. For this was not his purpose.
By the hypothesis of Arrhenius every planet that has an atmosphere must have a Zodiacal Light attending it, but the phenomenon is too faint for us to be able to see it in the case, for instance, of Venus, whose atmosphere is very abundant.
He was the first, in 1867, to examine the spectrum of the aurora borealis, and detected and measured the characteristic bright line in its yellow green region; but he was mistaken in supposing that this same line, which is often called by his name, is also to be seen in the zodiacal light.
A like line is found in the zodiacal light, it is true, but this is of little aid, for the zodiacal light, though thought by some astronomers to be due to meteor swarms about the sun, is held to be, on the whole, as mysterious as the aurora itself. Whatever the exact nature of the aurora, it has long been known to be intimately associated with the phenomena of terrestrial magnetism.
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