Perkenalan ke Bintang

Selasa, 12 Februari 2008

Perkenalan ke bintang.

Perkenalan ke Bintang

Bintang di sini disusun di hadapan kami di cara baru dan menarik hati; tidak sekeras tak berganti suar alam semesta; tidak sebelaka bahan karena menceriakan hasil analisa matematis yang dalam; tetapi lebih sebagai mereka sudah harus kelihatannya ke herdsmen tua, dan sewaktu mereka sebaiknya muncul kepada semua yang suka sekali konstelasi pemberontakan udara yang terbuka sesudah konstelasi, nature's peringatan-peringatan baik musim sewaktu mereka datang dan pergi.

Ini pengarang sudah menyelesaikan tanpa pengorbanan ketepatan ilmiah; bahwa keanggunan menarik bentuk sudah dicapai kemauan pembaca sendiri merasa. Buku akan memenuhi maksud berguna, dan menolong untuk menggerakkan wholesome bunga populer di bintang; kesenangan menghargainya ke reader's lebih menyukai.

Tujuan kepala situs web ini akan membagikan dengan orang lain kesenangan yang penulis sudah mempunyai di apa yang mungkin menyebut seorang kerabat persahabatan pribadi dengan bintang. Di kerabat ini sesuatu tahu yang lebih menyolok dengan nama dan secara sepintas; dan dapat menyambut mereka sebagai kenalan menyenangkan kalau mereka kembali tahun sesudah tahun pada musim hak, atau setiap malam sewaktu mereka mengabaikan garis edar mereka yang ditentukan tenang dan agung, atau menari dan bersinar-sinar, menurut mereka beberapa jubah.

Sesuatu mempunyai pengertian baik perkawanan dengan bintang kalau dia sudah mengencangkan kenalan seperti ini dengan mereka waktu di melihat dari jendela pada jam malam yang mana pun dia bisa melihat muka akrab bersinar-sinar di dia seolah-olah di pengakuan bersahabat fakta bahwa dia im'i/sttknow itu ialah hak pada jam itu dan ialah exipectitig ,'to. ^'it; atau waktu, di tengah malam dingin di menjelang akhir Februari, sebelum sudah kata pohon dan burung musim semi-waktu, dia melihat titik gemilang yang kebiru-biruan yang cerah hanya mendorong di seberang cakrawala timur dan tahu bahwa Vega sudah sadar kembali keanggunan langit lagi dan musim semi itu pasti akan terdapat dengannya.

Perasaan seperti itu untuk bintang tidak disebabkan oleh menggairahkan keajaiban di hamparan dan misteri langit, atau dengan membebani dan menindas pikiran dengan keluasan bahwa kelihatannya di sisi yang lain semua mengelilingi di pemikiran, tetapi dengan nampak bagaimana bintang, seperti bunga dan pohon, ialah tetapi bagian-bagian kecantikan tampak jelas alam yang mempunyai saham mereka dalam membuat yang "utuh yang sempurna."

Tanaman dan burung terdapat dalam belok mereka

"Sewaktu musim berputar mengatasi bintang puncak pohon lewat bintang,"

Dan kemajuan mantap musim berganti mendapat definiteness dan bunga ke sesuatu lain mustahil kalau dia sudah belajar untuk relasi tanda tampak jelas kemajuan tahun sewaktu mereka muncul di langit baik seperti di atas tanah. Dia lalu akan menghubungkan berkembang darah-akar dan kicauan pertama bluebird dengan keindahan timur Arcturus dan berkembang tanaman maple. Waktu dia menonton siang hari untuk bunga violet biru pertama dia akan melihat malam sama untuk muka bersinar-sinar Vega yang biru. Dia akan tahu bahwa j tidak- kosinus dan cuti Sirius kami di tentang waktu sama pada musim semi; bahwa waktu tangkai keemasan dan aster liar sedang berbunga sudah waktunya untuk mencari Fomalhaut dan bahwa Antares baru saja mau pergi; dan malam beku yang berbunyi keriat-keriut akan memaksanya di luar kehendak membelokkan matanya ke atas ke sangat kuat Orion yang melangkahi langit selatan.

Such things as these, that are so dear to the heart of the lover of nature, are not learned as one learns a lesson, or by the being told, but by coming into a personal relation, a relation very easily established by one who really desires it, with the flowers and trees and birds and stars, knowing them all in their seasons and their associations.

For such knowledge as this no technical information is necessary, though it may be followed by a desire for technical knowledge. The two are quite different things. But one can come to no real appreciation of anything in nature without some knowledge of particular objects. The acquirement of it is just as important and just as easy with the stars as with the flowers. One may revel in the beauty of a whole field of grass and flowers, but his heart gives a leap when he sees among them the face of some flower that he knows and likes, and he cries, "There's a lily," or a gentian, or whatever it may be. Birds may flit around us as we sit in the woods, and we note them as black, yellow, pretty, or whatever, and we think we are getting all the pleasure we can from them ; but interest quickens when one comes that we can name, and it at once has an individuality and an importance which none the rest have.

So it is with the stars: a starry night is beautiful and we gaze at it and enjoy it and do not care to know more about it in detail. But if by chance we come to know by name one bright star, it immediately separates itself from all the others and becomes an individual. If we enlarge our acquaintance in the skies, the whole aspect of the heavens is changed, and, instead of a brilliant assembly of impersonal points of light, we see a host of individuals that we know as bright Capella, sombre Betelgeuse, and others.

And this satisfaction we may secure without troubling about meridians and ecliptics, or right ascension and declination, or any other of the scientific trappings of the stars, just as we have it with the flowers without attending to sepals and petals, or pistils and anthers, and with the birds without any thought of anatomical classification. The only thing one needs to do in order to have such an acquaintance with the stars is to look for them: and this book aims to show how and when and where to look for them in the easiest possible way.

Any especially scientific information will be omitted, the desire being to make the stars as interesting in themselves as possible and to show how simple a matter it is to know in an intelligent but untechnical way the choicest individuals among them, the leading facts concerning them, their bearing in practical life, and all that is individually beautiful and important about them. This, it is believed, will yield a pleasure such that any one who has once experienced it will feel is a very large reward for the small labor that it really entails.

Instead of its being a dry and difficult thing to acquire any particular knowledge of the stars, one, if rightly directed, will find on pursuing the subject only just a little way that, while giving himself next to no trouble about it, he can soon come to know the more notable ones by name and to have a fair fund of practical information about them; and that many of the stars, which now all look so much alike to him, will have acquired such an individuality that he can recognize them at a glance in whatever position in the skies he may see them. And he will find, too, that the pleasure one never fails to have in the spectacle of the whole sky is multiplied many times for him as soon as he knows something of the individuals that make up this splendid panorama.

It is an interesting fact that the stars as individuals figure a great deal more prominently in old than in modern literature, and the writers of the older literature show a more personal acquaintance with them than the writers of the later literature show. This intimate knowledge of the stars really preceded the science of astronomy. The stars were better known even to people at large before there was any such science than they are known now, and there is only too much justice in Emerson's reproach that now, in these days of nautical almanacs, "the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe, the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind."

The explanation of this difference is that people in earlier times, being more out of doors than the people of the present day, were more observant of out -door objects and took more interest in them. For it is, after all, mainly a matter of observation; and for learning to know the leading stars and getting the interest that attends an acquaintance with them, little more is needful than simply looking at them. It is looking at them, too, with only the naked eye; for all the stars that attract special notice and have individual names were noticed and so named long before the invention of the telescope; and the principal constellations were traced and named by simple shepherds who tended their flocks at night in the open fields and had nothing to aid them but their own eyes and fancy.