With an exposure of 16 hours, Prof. H. C. Wilson finds on an area of less that 110' square a total of 4621 stars. He thinks, "That all of these stars belong to the Pleiades group is not at all probable. The great majority of them probably lie at immense distances beyond the group, and simply appear in it by projection."[274] He adds, "It has been found, however, by very careful measurements made during the last 75 years at the Königsbergh and Yale Observatories, that of the sixty-nine brighter stars, including those down to the 9th magnitude, only eight show any certain movement with reference to Alcyone. Since Alcyone has a proper motion or drift of 6" per century, this means that all the brightest stars except the eight mentioned are drifting with Alcyone and so form a true cluster, at approximately the same distance from the earth. Six of the eight stars which show relative drift are moving in the opposite direction to the movement of Alcyone, and at nearly the same rate, so that their motion is only apparent. They are really stationary, while Alcyone and the rest of the cluster are moving past them."[275] This tends to show that the faint stars are really _behind_ the cluster, and are unconnected with it.
It is a popular idea with some people that the Pole Star is the nearest of all the stars to the celestial pole. But photographs show that there are many faint stars nearer to the pole than the Pole Star. The Pole Star is at present at a distance of 1° 13' from the real pole of the heavens, but it is slowly approaching it. The minimum distance will be reached in the year 2104. From photographs taken by M. Flammarion at the Juvisy Observatory, he finds that there are at least 128 stars nearer to the pole than the Pole Star! The nearest star to the pole was, in the year 1902, a small star of about 12-1/2 magnitude, which was distant about 4 minutes of arc from the pole.[276] The estimated magnitude shows that the Pole Star is nearly 10,000 times brighter than this faint star!
It has been found that Sirius is bright enough to cast a shadow under favourable conditions. On March 22, 1903, the distinguished French astronomer Touchet succeeded in photographing the shadow of a brooch cast by this brilliant star. The exposure was 1{ h} 5{ m}.