The Pleiades were doubtless known to the rudest nations from the earliest times; they are also called the _mariner’s stars_. The name is from πλεῖν (_plein_), ‘to sail.’ The navigation of the Mediterranean lasted from May to the beginning of November, from the early rising to the early setting of the Pleiades. In how many beautiful effusions of poetry and sentiment has “the Lost Pleiad” been deplored!--and, to descend to more familiar illustration of this group, the “Seven Stars,” the sailors’ favourites, and a frequent river-side public-house sign, may be traced to the Pleiades.
The scintillation or twinkling of the stars is accompanied by variations of colour, which have been remarked from a very early age. M. Arago states, upon the authority of M. Babinet, that the name of Barakesch, given by the Arabians to Sirius, signifies _the star of a thousand colours_; and Tycho Brahe, Kepler, and others, attest to similar change of colour in twinkling. Even soon after the invention of the telescope, Simon Marius remarked that by removing the eye-piece of the telescope the images of the stars exhibited rapid fluctuations of brightness and colour. In 1814 Nicholson applied to the telescope a smart vibration, which caused the image of the star to be transformed into a curved line of light returning into itself, and diversified by several colours; each colour occupied about a third of the whole length of the curve, and by applying ten vibrations in a second, the light of Sirius in that time passed through thirty changes of colour. Hence the stars in general shine only by a portion of their light, the effect of twinkling being to diminish their brightness. This phenomenon M. Arago explains by the principle of the interference of light.
Ptolemy is said to have noted Sirius as a _red_ star, though it is now white. Sirius twinkles with red and blue light, and Ptolemy’s eyes, like those of several other persons, may have been more sensitive to the _red_ than to the _blue_ rays.--_Sir David Brewster’s More Worlds than One_, p. 235.
Some of the double stars are of very different and dissimilar colours; and to the revolving planetary bodies which apparently circulate around them, a day lightened by a red light is succeeded by, not a night, but a day equally brilliant, though illuminated only by a green light.
