A Million Times as Big as the Sun Low down on the south-east horizon soon after midnight a bright red star may be seen coming into Prominence just now, says a London exchange of the end of April. This is the first-magnitude star Antares, the brightest star in the constellation of Scorpius, too low down to be a prominent object in ow part of the world, but a magnificent stellar jewel in the southern heavens. Antares has always been considered one of the giants of our universe, but so enormous is the distance that separates it from the earth that it appears merely a point of light in the most powerful telescope, and until recently all attempts to de termine its actual size have been only rough guesses.
Professor Michelson's marvellous interferometer, recently installed on the 100-in. Hooker telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory, Oalifornia, has, however, provided a method of measuring the angular diameter of this star, and this immute angle, a small fraction of a second of are, combined with the most reliable estimate of its distance, has enabled its actual diameter to be calculated, and this works out at the stupendous figure of approximately 420,000,000 miles, Already the diameters of several Stars have been measured by means jof the interferometer. The results so far obtained show that our sun, which is over a million times bigger than the earth, is 2 mere baby compared to maty of the suns which appear to us as stars owing to their Vast distance. It would need over a million bodies as big as the sun and at least 145 billion globe the "size of the earth to mako a star jas big as Antares, which, if it were near the earth as the sun, would fill the whole sky and burn up every planet in the solar system. Fortunately, it is sunk so far in space that the. enormous heal it radiates is lost long before: t could reach the earth, as its light, travelling at the speed of 186,000 miles a second, takes well over 300 years to traverse, the gulf that separates us. he, light from Antares, which has just been utilized to determine its size, must have left it in the days of Queen Elizabeth. bered with sufficient impedimenta to enable him to appreciate the advantage of "train alongside." The Port of London Authorities have in hand a landing-stage for ocean passengers, but if this is to achieve the purpose of popularizing London {as an ocean-passenger port, vho railway connexions with the Metropolis
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.