Southern Cross
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Southern Cross. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a constellation visible only in the southern hemisphere . It consists of four stars, one of which is of the first magnitude, arranged in the form of a cross. The upper and lower stars form the pointers to the south pole; the right and left ones point directly east and west. Astronomers calculate that six thousand years ago the Southern Cross was visible in England and Germany just above the horizon. Southey (1774-1843), an English poet. He was born at Bristol, the son of a draper of that place. He was educated at Oxford and with Coleridge and Wordsworth formed the trio of Lake Poets. He owned a library of over 14,000 volumes, was a thoroughgoing and methodical reader, and an untiring writer, his works being filled with the results of painstaking research. His writings fill 109 volumes, not including some 150 articles, essays, criticisms, poems, and biographies for current periodicals. In 1813 he succeeded Henry James Pye as poet laureate . He had a democratic, even revolutionary, cast of mind, and was a man of influence, but he has left nothing entitling him to rank as a genius. The Battle of Blenheim and the Cataract of Lodore are his most popular poems. Madoc, Thalaba, Roderick, the Last of the Goths, and The Curse of Kehama are long poems, epic in form.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a constellation of the Southern Hemisphere, composed of four stars, one of which is of the first, and two of the second magnitude; they form an elongated figure, lying parallel to the horizon, nearly at the height of the pole. The largest of the four stars is the pole star of the S.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The constellation itself is where Aiton's Encyclopedia left it in 1910, and the precession that carried it below the European horizon still ticks over at the same rate though the boundaries of Crux, the smallest of the 88 constellations, were only fixed formally by the International Astronomical Union in the 1920s and 1930s. One claim has not survived: Collier's said in 1921 that "the largest of the four stars is the pole star of the S." There is no bright southern pole star at all; the honour falls to Sigma Octantis, at about fifth magnitude barely visible to the naked eye, and the Cross merely points the way, as Aiton's more cautious 1910 note about the "pointers" implies. What has changed most is the constellation's public life: since these entries it has become the emblem on the flags of Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Papua New Guinea and Samoa.
Written for this edition, 2026.