Category: Lifestyle

Already at the Sydney Observatory photographs have shown that the southern portion of this Dead Sea of Space is not quite bottomless, although its northern part defies the longest sounding lines of the astronomer. There is a similar, but less perfect, coal-sack in the northern hemisphere.

It was another of the magical wonders of the unknown South, and as such it formed the basis of many a wild surmise and many a sea-dog’s yarn. Scientific investigation has not diminished its prestige, and today no traveler in the southern hemisphere is indifferent to its fascinating strangeness.

It is an illuminating bit of astronomical history that when he was sweeping the then virgin heavens with his great telescopes he was accustomed to say to his sister who, note-book in hand, waited at his side to take down his words, fresh with the inspiration of discovery.

It is with similar feelings that the astronomer regards certain places where from the peaks of the universe his vision seems to range out into endless empty space. He sees there the shore of his little isthmus, and, beyond, unexplored immensity.

Along the borders of these lanes the stars are ranked in parallel rows, and what may be called the bottoms of the lanes are not entirely dark, but pebbled with faint stellar points. One of them which skirts the two dark gaps and traverses the cluster along its greatest diameter is edged with lines of stars.

In a general sense the M8 cluster answers to this description, but even if we undertook to account for its existence by a supposition like the above, the black gaps would remain unexplained, unless one could make a further draft on the imagination and suggest that the stars had been thrown into a vast eddy.