Page:In the high heavens.djvu/160

Fig. 25.—The Region of the Milky Way about β Cygni. Showing thousands of telescopic stars.

the nebula was of the same order as stars which had been observed, then its light would be expanded by the prism, and weak as the light was at the beginning it would become much weaker still when spread out in the act of dispersion. When, however, Huggins found that he could see light in the spectroscope he so little realised the nature of his important discovery that he thought for the moment what he saw must have had its origin in some