Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 May 1895 — The Enormous Sun, Arcturus. [ARTICLE]

The Enormous Sun, Arcturus.

If the earth were situated midway between the sun and Arcturus it would receive 5,198 times as much light from that star as it would from the sun 1 It is quite probable, moreover, that the heat of Arcturus exceeds the solar heat in the same ratio, for the spectroscope shows that although Arcturus is surrounded with a cloak of metallic vapors proportionately far more extensive than the sun’s, yet, smothered as the great star seems in some respects to be, it rivals Sirius itself in the intensity of its radiant energy. If wo suppose the radiation of Arcturus to be the same per unit of surface as the sun’s, it follows that Arcturus exceeds the sun about 375,000 times in volume, and that its diameter is no less than 62,350,000 miles! Imagine the earth and the other planets constituting the solar system removed to Arcturus and sot revolving around it in orbits of the same forms and sizes as those in which they circle about the sun. Poor Mercury I For that little planet it would indeed bo a jump from the frying pan into the fire, because, ns it rushed to perihelion, Mercury would plunge more than 2,500,000 miles beneath the surface of the giant star. Venus and the earth would perhaps melt like snowflakes at the mouth of a furnace. Even far away Neptune, the remotest member of the system, would be bathed in torrid heat.