', 1842, p. 410-412, and 441).
The magnificent zones of the southern heavens, between 50 degrees and 80
degrees, are especially rich in nebulous stars, and in compressed
unresolvable nebua e. The larger of the two Magellanic clouds, which circle
round the starless, desert pole of the south, appears, according to the most
recent researches,* as "a collection of clusters of stars, composed of
globular clusters and nebulae of different magnitude, and of large nebulous
spots
p 86
not resolvable, which, producing a general brightness in the field of view,
form, as it were, the back-ground of the picture."
[footnote] *The two Magellanic clouds, Nubecula major and Nubecula minor,
are very remarkable objects. The larger of the two is an accumulated mass
of stars, and consists of clusters of stars of irregular form, either
conical masses or nebulae of different magnitudes and degrees of
condensation. This is interspersed with nebulous spots, not resolvable into
stars, but which are probably 'star dust', appearing only as a general
radiance upon the telescopic field of a twenty-feet reflector, and forming a
luminous ground on which other objects of striking and indescribable form
are scattered. In no other portion of the heavens are so many nebulous and
stellar masses thronged together in an equally small space.
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