ss. Its celebrated rings are telescopic objects but a small glass
reveals them.

URANUS.

The student will hardly mistake Uranus for a fixed star, as it is only
under the most favorable circumstances that it can be seen with the
naked eye.

At its nearest approach to the earth, it is as bright as a
sixth-magnitude star. Uranus is accompanied by four moons, and takes
seven years to pass through a constellation of the Zodiac.

NEPTUNE.

Neptune is the most distant of the planets in the solar system, and is
never visible to the naked eye.

The earth comes properly under a discussion of the planets, but a
description of it is hardly within the scope of this work.

Confusion in identifying the planets is really confined to Mars and
Saturn, for Venus and Jupiter are much brighter than any of the fixed
stars, and their position in the heavens identifies them, as we have
seen before.

The following table of first-magnitude stars in the Zodiacal
constellations confines the question of identifying the planets to a
comparison of the unknown star with the following-named stars:

Castor and Pollux in Gemini.
Spica " Virgo.
Regulus " Leo.
Aldebaran " Taurus.
Antares " Scorpius.

The first four stars named above are white in color, so that either
Mars or Saturn is readily distinguished from them.

As for Aldebaran and Antares, which are both red stars, not unlike
Mars and Saturn in color and magnitude, the fact that the latter do
not twinkle, and that they do not appear in the diagrams, should
satisfy the observer of their identity. Reference to an almanac, or a
few nights of observation, will in any case set at rest any doubt in
the matter.

[Illustration: THE PLANETARY ORBITS]

[Illustration: COMPARATIVE SIZE OF THE PLANETS.]

THE MILKY WAY.

The Milky Way, or Galaxy as it is sometimes called, is a great band of
light that stretches across the heavens. Certain portions of it are
worthy of being viewed with an opera-glass, which separates this
seemingly confused and hazy stream into numberless points of light,
emanating from myriads of suns.

This wonderful feature of the heavens is seen to best advantage during
the months of July, August, September, and October. Beginning near the
head of Cepheus, about thirty degrees from the North Pole, it passes
through Cassiopeia, Perseus, Auriga, part of Orion, and the feet of
Gemini, where it crosses the