File:The children's book of stars (1908) (14576483998).jpg

Identifier: childrensbookofs00mittuoft (find matches)
Title: The children's book of stars
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors: Mitton, G. E. (Geraldine Edith)
Subjects: Astronomy -- Juvenile literature
Publisher: London A. and C. Black
Contributing Library: Gerstein - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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out of their places.This sounds odd, and requires a word of explana-tion. The fact is that anything seen through anytransparent medium like water or air is what iscalled refracted—that is to say, the rays comingfrom it look bent. Everyone is quite familiar withthis in everyday life, though perhaps they maynot have noticed it. You cannot thrust a stickinto the water without seeing that it looks crooked.Air being less dense than water has not quite sostrong a refracting power, but still it has some.We cannot prove it in just the same way, becausewe are all inside the atmosphere ourselves, andthere is no possibility of thrusting a stick into itfrom the outside I The only way we know it is bylooking at something which is outside already, andwe find plenty of objects in the sky. As a matterof fact, the stars are all a little pulled out of theirplaces by being seen through the air, and thoughof course we do not notice this, astronomers knowit and have to make allowance for it. The effect
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SHINING VISITORS 115 is most noticeable in the case of the sun when he isgoing down, for the atmosphere bends his rays up,and though we see him a great glowing red ballon the horizon, and watch him, as we think, dropgradually out of sight, we are really looking athim for the last moment or two when he hasalready gone, for the rays are bent up by the airand his image Hngers when the real sun hasdisappeared. Therefore in looking through the luminous stuffthat forms a comets tail astronomers might wellexpect to see the stars displaced, but not a sign ofthis appears. It is difficult to imagine, therefore,what the tail can be made of. The idea is that thesun exercises a sort of repulsive effect on certainelements found in the comets head—that is to say, itpushes them away, and that as the head approachesthe sun, these elements are driven out of it awayfrom the sun in vapour. This action may havesomething to do with electricity, which is yetlittle understood ; anyway, the effect is that,

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