Visual Education (Jan 1923-Dec 1924)

46 Visual Education THE GREAT SPIRAL NEBULA IN ANDROMEDA Photographed with the 24-inch reflector at the Yerkes Observatory, by G. W. Ritchey This object, just faintly visible to the naked eye, has doubtless been a puzzle to men since they first began to scan the sky. Although studied with the telescope ever since that instrument was invented, the evident spiral character of the nebula was not recognized until the first good photographs were obtained, some thirty years ago. Its size is beyond anything that we can imagine, and some astronomers estimate its distance to be so great that half a million years would be required for its light to reach us (light traveling 11 million miles a minute) . The spectroscope shows that the object is not gaseous, but its spectrum is similar to that of a cluster of stars too distant to be separately distinguished. It is regarded by some as the Milky Way of an independent stellar system. The spectroscope also shows that it is approaching us with a speed of 180 miles per second. Sappho, also known as Number Eighty. It was then of the eleventh magnitude and was found by Isaac Roberts on a negative made with his reflector in 1886. Professor Max Wolf of Heidelberg was the first to discover an unknown asteroid by photography, when he noticed a small streak on a plate taken on December 22, 1891. After its orbit was determined and the object thus proved to be new, it received the number 323, and was named Brucia, in honor of Miss Catherine L. Bruce of New York. Among her many benefactions to astronomical science was the gift of a fine pair of photographic telescopes, of sixteen inches aperture and eighty inches focal length, which were made in America and presented to Professor Wolf, distinguished pioneer in the application of photography to astronomy. (To be continued) Museum, School and Library THE Field Museum of Chicago recently co-operated with the Chicago Public Library in an interesting attempt to use the visual as a means of increasing circulation and attendance in the Children's Room. A number of the Museum's attractive traveling exhibits, such as are circulated among the public schools, were conspicuously placed where they would capture the children's attention. The cicada, the dragonfly, the interesting little burying beetle, and the Monarch butterfly were among the picturesque cases on display. Supplementing this exhibit, the Library placed on racks near the cases pictures and books dealing with related nature-study subjects. There was an immediate response on the part of the children. One evidence of the fillip given to their interest was furnished by the unprecedented rush on the picture department. In this service there are something like 40,000 pictures, culled from every source, of which forty may be taken out upon the subscriber's card at a time. So great was the demand made upon this department after the exhibit opened that there were not enough pictures to supply the calls. When library and museum thus enter into active partnership with the schools, helping to vitalize the work of the classroom, they are making themselves active elements in the community and ceasing to be simply places where books and specimens are stored. ONE generation, one entire generation, of all the world of children, understood as they should be, loved as they ask to be, and developed as they might be, would more than bring the millenium. — Frances Hodgson Burnett.