Here the plane of
the whirling nebula nearly coincides with our line of sight and we see
the object at a low angle. It is far advanced and torn to shreds, and
if we could look at it perpendicularly to its plane it is evident that
it would closely resemble the spectacle in Triangulum.
Then take the famous Andromeda Nebula (see Frontispiece), which is so
vast that notwithstanding its immense distance even the naked eye
perceives it as an enigmatical wisp in the sky. Its image on the
sensitive plate is the masterpiece of astronomical photography; for
wild, incomprehensible beauty there is nothing that can be compared
with it. Here, if anywhere, we look upon the spectacle of creation in
one of its earliest stages. The Andromeda Nebula is apparently less
advanced toward transformation into stellar bodies than is that in
Triangulum. The immense crowd of stars sprinkled over it and its
neighborhood seem in the main to lie this side of the nebula, and
consequently to have no connection with it. But incipient stars (in
some places clusters of them) are seen in the nebulous rings, while
one or two huge masses seem to give promise of transformation into
stellar bodies of unusual magnitude. I say ``rings'' because although
the loops encompassing the Andromeda Nebula have been called spirals
by those who wish utterly to demolish Laplace's hypothesis, yet they
are not manifestly such, as can be seen on comparing them with the
undoubted spirals of the Lord Rosse Nebula.
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