Blue - white - yellow - red stars - differences in stars by color.

Juliette Benzoni

Blue Star

Return

Winter 1918

Dawn did not come for a very long time. It always happens in December, but this night seemed to experience an insidious pleasure, lasting endlessly and, apparently, not wanting to accept the need to leave the stage ...

Ever since the train had passed Brenner, where an obelisk had recently been erected to mark the new frontier of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, Aldo Morosini had been unable to sleep, except for a short time to close his eyes.

The ashtray in his shabby compartment, which no one had entered since Innsbruck, was full of cigarette butts. Before extinguishing one cigarette, Aldo lit another, and in order to ventilate the room, he often had to lower the window. Outside, sparkling coal dust blew into the compartment along with the icy wind, vomited by an old locomotive, quite suitable for dumping. But at the same time as the dust, through the open window, alpine smells also penetrated, the aromas of pine needles and snow, mixed with some subtle, barely perceptible fragrance, vaguely reminiscent of the familiar vapors over the lagoons.

The traveler was waiting for a meeting with Venice, as in the old days - a meeting with a woman in the place that he called his "watchtower". And, perhaps, now he burned more with impatience, because Venice - he was sure of this - would never disappoint him.

Deciding not to close the window, Aldo sat down on a shabby velvet seat in his first-class compartment with peeling inlaid tables and tarnished mirrors, which until recently reflected the white uniforms of officers heading to Trieste to climb the decks of the Austrian ships stationed there in the roadstead. They were the extinguished glare of a world that turned into a nightmare and anarchy for the vanquished, relief and hope for the victors, among whom, to the great surprise of Prince Morosini himself, he turned out to be.

The war as such ended for him on October 24, 1917. He was one of those 300,000 Italians who made up the huge group taken prisoner at Caporetto, along with 3,000 cannons and many other spoils of war. As a result, the prince spent the last year in the Tyrolean castle, turned into a prisoner of war camp, where, by special permission, he was given a small, but separate room. This happened for a simple, though not entirely befitting of the circumstances, reason: before the war, in Hungary, while hunting on the Esterhazy estate, Morosini met the then omnipotent General Hotzendorf.

But this Hotzendorf was a good man! He was sometimes visited by brilliant insights, followed, alas, by dramatic periods of prostration. He had a long, intelligent face with a large mustache "a la Archduke Ferdinand", a crew cut of blond hair, and thoughtful eyes of an indefinite hue. God alone knows what happened to the general after he fell out of favor in July, having suffered a series of defeats on the Italian front near Asiago! The end of the war doomed him to a kind of obscurity, which, from Morosini's point of view, allowed him to be treated simply as an old acquaintance ...

About six in the morning, under the howling of gusty winds, the train arrived in Treviso. Now only thirty kilometers separated Aldo from his beloved city. Trembling a little, he lit the last, still Austrian, cigarette and, waving his hand slowly, drove the smoke away. Next time, the tobacco will have the divine smell of newfound freedom.

Dawn had passed by the time the train reached the long dam where the Venetian ships moored. In the light of the gray day, the surface of the lagoon gleamed like ancient pewter. The city shrouded in yellow mist was barely distinguishable, and through the open window in the compartment the salty smell of the sea penetrated, and the cries of seagulls could be heard. Aldo's heart suddenly began to beat with that special trepidation that causes the upcoming love date. However, neither his wife nor his fiancée were waiting for him at the end of the dam, which was fenced with double steel wire stretched over the waves. Morosini's mother, the only woman he had adored all his life, had recently died, only a few weeks before his release, and the bitterness of that loss was greatly aggravated by a sense of the absurdity of what was happening, the disappointment associated with the irreversibility of death: such a wound is not easy to heal. Isabella de Montlaur, Princess Morosini, now rested on the island of San Michele, under the vaults of a baroque tomb located near the Chapel of Emilian. Now the white palace, like a flower that has blossomed over the Grand Canal, will seem empty, devoid of soul...

Rigel and the nebula IC 2118 that it illuminates.

A blue supergiant is a type of supergiant (luminosity class I) spectral classes O and B.

General characteristics

These are young very hot and bright stars with a surface temperature of 20,000-50,000 °C. On the Hertzsprung - Russell diagram are located in the upper left side. Their mass is in the range of 10-50 solar masses (), the maximum radius reaches 25 solar radii (). These rare and mysterious stars are among the hottest, largest, and brightest objects in the region.

Due to their huge masses, they have a relatively short lifespan (10-50 million years) and are only present in young cosmic structures such as open clusters, spiral arms, and irregular galaxies. They are almost never found in the cores of spiral and elliptical galaxies or in globular clusters that are thought to be old objects.

Despite their rarity and their short lives, blue supergiants are often found among stars visible to the naked eye; their inherent brightness compensates for their small number.

Interchange of supergiants

Orion Gamma, Algol B and the Sun (center).

Blue supergiants are massive stars that are in a certain phase of the "dying" process. In this phase, the intensity of thermonuclear reactions occurring in the core of the star decreases, which leads to the compression of the star. As a result of a significant decrease in the surface area, the density of the radiated energy increases, and this, in turn, entails heating of the surface. This kind of compression of a massive star leads to the transformation of a red supergiant into a blue one. The reverse process is also possible - the transformation of a blue supergiant into a red one.

While the stellar wind from a red supergiant is dense and slow, the wind from a blue supergiant is fast but thin. If a red supergiant turns blue as a result of compression, then the faster wind collides with the previously emitted slow wind and causes the ejected material to condense into a thin shell. Almost all observed blue supergiants have a similar envelope, confirming that they were all formerly red supergiants.

As it develops, a star can transform from a red supergiant (slow, dense wind) to a blue supergiant (fast, rarefied wind) and vice versa several times, which creates concentric weak shells around the star. In the intermediate phase, the star may be yellow or white, such as the North Star. As a rule, a massive star ends its life with an explosion, but a very small number of stars, the mass of which ranges from eight to twelve solar masses, do not explode, but continue to evolve and eventually turn into oxygen-neon. It is not yet clear exactly how and why these white dwarfs are formed from stars, which theoretically should end their evolution with a small supernova explosion. Both blue and red supergiants can evolve into a supernova.

Since massive stars are red supergiants a significant portion of the time, we see more red supergiants than blue supergiants, and most supernovae come from red supergiants. Astrophysicists have previously even assumed that all supernovae originate from red supergiants, but supernova SN 1987A formed from a blue supergiant and thus this assumption turned out to be incorrect. This event also led to a revision of some provisions of the theory of stellar evolution.

Examples of blue supergiants

Rigel

The most famous example is Rigel (beta Orionis), the brightest star in the constellation Orion, with about 20 times the mass and about 130,000 times the Sun's luminosity, making it one of the most powerful stars in the Galaxy (in any case). case, the most powerful of the brightest stars in the sky, since Rigel is the closest of the stars with such a huge luminosity). The ancient Egyptians associated Rigel with Sakh, the king of the stars and the patron of the dead, and later with Osiris.

Gamma Sails

Gamma Sails is a multiple star, the brightest in the constellation Sails. It has an apparent magnitude of +1.7m. The distance to the stars of the system is estimated at 800 light years. Gamma Sails (Regor) is a massive blue supergiant. It has a mass 30 times the mass of the Sun. Its diameter is 8 times that of the Sun. The luminosity of Regora is 10,600 solar luminosities. The unusual spectrum of the star, where instead of dark absorption lines there are bright emission lines of radiation, gave the name to the star as the "Spectral Pearl of the Southern Sky"

Alpha Giraffe

The distance to the star is about 7 thousand light years, and yet, the star is visible to the naked eye. It is the third brightest star in the constellation Giraffe, followed by Beta Giraffa and CS Giraffa, respectively.

Zeta Orionis

Zeta Orionis (named Alnitak) is a star in the constellation Orion which is the brightest class O star with a visual magnitude of +1.72 (at a maximum of +1.72 and at a minimum of up to +1.79), the left and closest star asterism "Orion's Belt". The distance to the star is about 800 light years, the luminosity is about 35,000 solar.

Tau Canis Major

Spectral binary star in the constellation Canis Major. It is the brightest star in the open star cluster NGC 2362, at a distance of 3200 ly. years from . Tau Canis Majoris is a blue supergiant of spectral class O with an apparent magnitude of +4.37m. The Tau Canis Major star system has at least five components. In the first approximation, Tau Canis Majoris is a triple star in which two stars have an apparent magnitude of +4.4m and +5.3m and are 0.15 arc seconds apart, and the third star has an apparent magnitude of +10m and is from them by 8 arc seconds, revolving with a period of 155 days around the inner pair.

Zeta Korma

Artist's view of Zeta Korma

Zeta Purmus is the brightest star in the constellation Puppis. The star has its own name Naos. It is a massive blue star with a luminosity of 870,000 times that of the Sun. Zeta Puppis is 59 times more massive than the Sun. It has a spectral type O9.

It is assumed that over the next hundreds of thousands of years, Zeta Puppis will gradually cool and expand, and will pass through all spectral classes: B, A, F, G, K, and M, as it cools. As this happens, the main radiation of the star will move into the visible range, and Naos will become one of the brightest stars in the future earthly sky. After 2 million years, Naos will have a spectral type of M5, and its size will be much larger than the current Earth's orbit. Naos will then explode, becoming a supernova. Due to the short distance to the Earth, this supernova will be much brighter than the total brightness, and the core of the star will collapse immediately into. It is possible that this will be accompanied by a strong gamma-ray burst.

If you look closely at the night sky, it is easy to notice that the stars looking at us differ in color. Bluish, white, red, they shine evenly or flicker like a Christmas tree garland. In a telescope, color differences become more apparent. The reason for this diversity lies in the temperature of the photosphere. And, contrary to a logical assumption, the hottest are not red, but blue, white-blue and white stars. But first things first.

Spectral classification

Stars are huge hot balls of gas. The way we see them from Earth depends on many parameters. For example, stars don't actually twinkle. It is very easy to be convinced of this: it is enough to remember the Sun. The flickering effect occurs due to the fact that the light coming from cosmic bodies to us overcomes the interstellar medium, full of dust and gas. Another thing is color. It is a consequence of the heating of the shells (especially the photosphere) to certain temperatures. The true color may differ from the visible one, but the difference is usually small.

Today, the Harvard spectral classification of stars is used all over the world. It is a temperature one and is based on the shape and relative intensity of the spectrum lines. Each class corresponds to the stars of a certain color. The classification was developed at the Harvard Observatory in 1890-1924.

One Shaved Englishman Chewing Dates Like Carrots

There are seven main spectral classes: O-B-A-F-G-K-M. This sequence reflects a gradual decrease in temperature (from O to M). To remember it, there are special mnemonic formulas. In Russian, one of them sounds like this: "One Shaved Englishman Chewed Dates Like Carrots." Two more are added to these classes. The letters C and S denote cold luminaries with metal oxide bands in the spectrum. Consider the star classes in more detail:

Class O is characterized by the highest surface temperature (from 30 to 60 thousand Kelvin). Stars of this type exceed the Sun in mass by 60, and in radius by 15 times. Their visible color is blue. In terms of luminosity, they are ahead of our star by more than a million times. The blue star HD93129A, belonging to this class, is characterized by one of the highest luminosity among known cosmic bodies. According to this indicator, it is ahead of the Sun by 5 million times. The blue star is located at a distance of 7.5 thousand light years from us.
Class B has a temperature of 10-30 thousand Kelvin, a mass 18 times greater than the same parameter of the Sun. These are white-blue and white stars. Their radius is 7 times greater than that of the Sun.
Class A is characterized by a temperature of 7.5-10 thousand Kelvin, a radius and mass exceeding 2.1 and 3.1 times, respectively, the similar parameters of the Sun. These are white stars.
Class F: temperature 6000-7500 K. The mass is 1.7 times greater than the sun, the radius is 1.3. From Earth, such stars also look white, their true color is yellowish white.
Class G: temperature 5-6 thousand Kelvin. The Sun belongs to this class. The visible and true color of such stars is yellow.
Class K: temperature 3500-5000 K. The radius and mass are less than solar, they are 0.9 and 0.8 of the corresponding parameters of the star. The color of these stars seen from Earth is yellowish-orange.
Class M: temperature 2-3.5 thousand Kelvin. The mass and radius are 0.3 and 0.4 of the similar parameters of the Sun. From the surface of our planet, they look red-orange. Beta Andromedae and Alpha Chanterelles belong to the M class. The bright red star familiar to many is Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis). It is best to look for it in the sky in winter. The red star is located above and slightly to the left

Each class is divided into subclasses from 0 to 9, that is, from the hottest to the coldest. The numbers of stars indicate belonging to a certain spectral type and the degree of heating of the photosphere in comparison with other luminaries in the group. For example, the Sun belongs to the class G2.

visual whites

Thus, star classes B through F can look white from Earth. And only objects belonging to the A-type actually have this coloration. So, the star Saif (the constellation Orion) and Algol (beta Perseus) to an observer not armed with a telescope will seem white. They belong to spectral class B. Their true color is blue-white. Also appearing white are Mythrax and Procyon, the brightest stars in the celestial drawings of Perseus and Canis Minor. However, their true color is closer to yellow (class F).

Why are stars white to an earthly observer? The color is distorted due to the vast distance separating our planet from similar objects, as well as voluminous clouds of dust and gas, often found in space.

Class A

White stars are characterized by a not so high temperature as representatives of the O and B classes. Their photosphere heats up to 7.5-10 thousand Kelvin. Spectral class A stars are much larger than the Sun. Their luminosity is also greater - about 80 times.

In the spectra of A stars, hydrogen lines of the Balmer series are strongly pronounced. The lines of other elements are noticeably weaker, but they become more significant as you move from subclass A0 to A9. Giants and supergiants belonging to the spectral class A are characterized by slightly less pronounced hydrogen lines than main sequence stars. In the case of these luminaries, the lines of heavy metals become more noticeable.

Many peculiar stars belong to the spectral class A. This term refers to luminaries that have noticeable features in the spectrum and physical parameters, which makes it difficult to classify them. For example, rather rare stars of the Bootes lambda type are characterized by a lack of heavy metals and very slow rotation. Peculiar luminaries also include white dwarfs.

Class A includes such bright objects in the night sky as Sirius, Menkalinan, Aliot, Castor and others. Let's get to know them better.

Alpha Canis Major

Sirius is the brightest, though not the closest, star in the sky. Its distance is 8.6 light years. For an earthly observer, it seems so bright because it has an impressive size and yet is not as far removed as many other large and bright objects. The closest star to the Sun is Sirius in this list is in fifth place.

It refers to and is a system of two components. Sirius A and Sirius B are separated by 20 astronomical units and rotate with a period of just under 50 years. The first component of the system, a main-sequence star, belongs to the spectral type A1. Its mass is twice that of the sun, and its radius is 1.7 times. It can be observed with the naked eye from Earth.

The second component of the system is a white dwarf. The star Sirius B is almost equal to our luminary in mass, which is not typical for such objects. Typically, white dwarfs are characterized by a mass of 0.6-0.7 solar masses. At the same time, the dimensions of Sirius B are close to those of the earth. It is assumed that the white dwarf stage began for this star about 120 million years ago. When Sirius B was located on the main sequence, it was probably a luminary with a mass of 5 solar masses and belonged to the spectral class B.

Sirius A, according to scientists, will move to the next stage of evolution in about 660 million years. Then it will turn into a red giant, and a little later - into a white dwarf, like its companion.

Alpha Eagle

Like Sirius, many white stars, whose names are given below, are well known not only to people who are fond of astronomy because of their brightness and frequent mention in the pages of science fiction literature. Altair is one of those luminaries. Alpha Eagle is found, for example, in Steven King. In the night sky, this star is clearly visible due to its brightness and relatively close proximity. The distance separating the Sun and Altair is 16.8 light years. Of the stars of spectral class A, only Sirius is closer to us.

Altair is 1.8 times as massive as the Sun. Its characteristic feature is a very fast rotation. The star makes one rotation around its axis in less than nine hours. The rotation speed near the equator is 286 km/s. As a result, the "nimble" Altair will be flattened from the poles. In addition, due to the elliptical shape, the temperature and brightness of the star decrease from the poles to the equator. This effect is called "gravitational darkening".

Another feature of Altair is that its brilliance changes over time. It belongs to the Delta Shield type variables.

Alpha Lyrae

Vega is the most studied star after the Sun. Alpha Lyrae is the first star to have its spectrum determined. She also became the second luminary after the Sun, captured in the photograph. Vega was also among the first stars to which scientists measured the distance using the parlax method. For a long period, the brightness of the star was taken as 0 when determining the magnitudes of other objects.

Lyra's alpha is well known to both the amateur astronomer and the simple observer. It is the fifth brightest among the stars, and is included in the Summer Triangle asterism along with Altair and Deneb.

The distance from the Sun to Vega is 25.3 light years. Its equatorial radius and mass are 2.78 and 2.3 times larger than the similar parameters of our star, respectively. The shape of a star is far from being a perfect ball. The diameter at the equator is noticeably larger than at the poles. The reason is the huge speed of rotation. At the equator, it reaches 274 km / s (for the Sun, this parameter is slightly more than two kilometers per second).

One of the features of Vega is the disk of dust that surrounds it. Presumably, it arose as a result of a large number of collisions of comets and meteorites. The dust disk revolves around the star and is heated by its radiation. As a result, the intensity of the infrared radiation of Vega increases. Not so long ago, asymmetries were discovered in the disk. Their likely explanation is that the star has at least one planet.

Alpha Gemini

The second brightest object in the constellation Gemini is Castor. He, like the previous luminaries, belongs to the spectral class A. Castor is one of the brightest stars in the night sky. In the corresponding list, he is on the 23rd place.

Castor is a multiple system consisting of six components. The two main elements (Castor A and Castor B) revolve around a common center of mass with a period of 350 years. Each of the two stars is a spectral binary. The Castor A and Castor B components are less bright and presumably belong to the M spectral type.

Castor C was not immediately connected to the system. Initially, it was designated as an independent star YY Gemini. In the process of researching this region of the sky, it became known that this luminary was physically connected with the Castor system. The star revolves around a center of mass common to all components with a period of several tens of thousands of years and is also a spectral binary.

Beta Aurigae

The celestial drawing of the Charioteer includes about 150 "points", many of them are white stars. The names of the luminaries will say little to a person far from astronomy, but this does not detract from their significance for science. The brightest object in the celestial pattern, belonging to the spectral class A, is Mencalinan or Beta Aurigae. The name of the star in Arabic means "shoulder of the owner of the reins."

Mencalinan is a ternary system. Its two components are subgiants of spectral class A. The brightness of each of them exceeds the similar parameter of the Sun by 48 times. They are separated by a distance of 0.08 astronomical units. The third component is a red dwarf at a distance of 330 AU from the pair. e.

Epsilon Ursa Major

The brightest "point" in perhaps the most famous constellation of the northern sky (Ursa Major) is Aliot, also belonging to class A. The apparent magnitude is 1.76. In the list of the brightest luminaries, the star takes 33rd place. Alioth enters the asterism of the Big Dipper and is located closer to the bowl than other luminaries.

The Aliot spectrum is characterized by unusual lines that fluctuate with a period of 5.1 days. It is assumed that the features are associated with the influence of the magnetic field of the star. Fluctuations in the spectrum, according to recent data, may occur due to the close location of a cosmic body with a mass of almost 15 Jupiter masses. Whether this is so is still a mystery. Her, like other secrets of the stars, astronomers are trying to understand every day.

white dwarfs

The story about white stars will be incomplete if we do not mention that stage in the evolution of the stars, which is designated as the "white dwarf". Such objects got their name due to the fact that the first discovered of them belonged to the spectral class A. It was Sirius B and 40 Eridani B. Today, white dwarfs are called one of the options for the final stage of a star's life.

Let us dwell in more detail on the life cycle of the luminaries.

Star evolution

Stars are not born in one night: any of them goes through several stages. First, a cloud of gas and dust begins to shrink under the influence of its own. Slowly, it takes the form of a ball, while the energy of gravity turns into heat - the temperature of the object rises. At the moment when it reaches a value of 20 million Kelvin, the reaction of nuclear fusion begins. This stage is considered the beginning of the life of a full-fledged star.

Suns spend most of their time on the main sequence. Hydrogen cycle reactions are constantly going on in their depths. The temperature of the stars may vary. When all the hydrogen in the nucleus ends, a new stage of evolution begins. Now helium is the fuel. At the same time, the star begins to expand. Its luminosity increases, while the surface temperature, on the contrary, decreases. The star leaves the main sequence and becomes a red giant.

The mass of the helium core gradually increases, and it begins to shrink under its own weight. The red giant stage ends much faster than the previous one. The path that further evolution will take depends on the initial mass of the object. Low-mass stars at the red giant stage begin to swell. As a result of this process, the object sheds its shells. The bare core of the star is also formed. In such a nucleus, all fusion reactions are completed. It is called a helium white dwarf. More massive red giants (up to a certain limit) evolve into carbon white dwarfs. They have heavier elements than helium in their cores.

Characteristics

White dwarfs are bodies that are usually very close in mass to the Sun. At the same time, their size corresponds to the earth. The colossal density of these cosmic bodies and the processes taking place in their depths are inexplicable from the point of view of classical physics. The secrets of the stars helped to reveal quantum mechanics.

The substance of white dwarfs is an electron-nuclear plasma. It is almost impossible to design it even in a laboratory. Therefore, many characteristics of such objects remain incomprehensible.

Even if you study the stars all night long, you will not be able to detect at least one white dwarf without special equipment. Their luminosity is much less than that of the sun. According to scientists, white dwarfs make up approximately 3 to 10% of all objects in the Galaxy. However, to date, only those of them have been found that are located no further than 200-300 parsecs from the Earth.

White dwarfs continue to evolve. Immediately after formation, they have a high surface temperature, but cool quickly. A few tens of billions of years after formation, according to the theory, a white dwarf turns into a black dwarf - a body that does not emit visible light.

A white, red or blue star for the observer differs primarily in color. The astronomer looks deeper. Color for him immediately tells a lot about the temperature, size and mass of the object. A blue or bright blue star is a giant hot ball, far ahead of the Sun in all respects. White luminaries, examples of which are described in the article, are somewhat smaller. Star numbers in various catalogs also tell professionals a lot, but not all. A large amount of information about the life of distant space objects has either not yet been explained, or remains not even discovered.

Dawn did not come for a very long time. It always happens in December, but this night seemed to experience insidious pleasure, lasting endlessly and not wanting, apparently, to reconcile with the need to leave the stage ...

But this Hotzendorf was a good man! He was sometimes visited by brilliant insights, followed, alas, by dramatic periods of prostration. He had a long, intelligent face with a large mustache "a la Archduke Ferdinand", a crew cut of blond hair, and thoughtful eyes of an indefinite hue. God only knows what happened to the general after he fell out of favor in July, having suffered a series of defeats on the Italian front near Asiago! The end of the war doomed him to a kind of obscurity, which, from Morosini's point of view, allowed him to be treated simply as an old acquaintance ...

The memory of the house helped Morosini cope with the pain: the train was approaching the station, and it was unacceptable for him to step on the land of Venice with tears in his eyes. The brakes screeched; a slight push and the locomotive let off steam.

Aldo pulled his simple belongings from the wagon grid, jumped onto the platform and ran.

When he left the station building, the fog was already shimmering with lilac highlights. Morosini spotted Zaccaria at once, standing by the steps leading down to the water. Straight as a candle, in a bowler hat and a long black coat, the butler was waiting for his master, stretched out at attention; he was so accustomed to his unbending posture that he apparently would not have been able to hold himself otherwise. Probably, it was not so easy to acquire such a posture for an ardent Venetian, who in his younger years looked more like an operatic tenor than a butler of a princely house.

The years and the copious food he owed to the efforts of his wife Cecina left their mark, giving Zaccaria a certain oily sheen, imposingness and gravity; thanks to them, he almost reached that Olympian majesty, that ability to look at everything a little from above, which distinguished his fellow Englishmen, who always aroused his envy. At the same time - and this was very funny - the fullness gave him a resemblance to Emperor Napoleon I, and Zaccaria was extremely proud of this. But Chechina was driven to despair by his pomposity, although she knew that this did not affect her husband's heartfelt feelings in any way. Nevertheless, the woman liked to repeat that if she fell dead before his eyes, Zaccaria would be more concerned with how to maintain external dignity than with her bitter experiences, which Cecina, however, did not doubt, but was convinced that his first reaction brows will become disapprovingly furrowed due to non-compliance with external propriety.

And yet! .. Noticing the approaching Aldo in a shabby uniform, his waxy complexion, indicating deprivation and lack of sun, the royal Zaccaria immediately lost all his arrogance. With tears in his eyes, he rushed to the returning owner, and with such ardor that the bowler hat fell off his head and, like a black ball, rolled into the canal, floated on the water, presenting a funny sight. But the excited Zaccaria did not even pay attention to this.

- Prince! he moaned. “Oh my God, how are you?”

Aldo laughed.

- Well, don't be dramatic, please! Better hug me!

They threw themselves into each other's arms, touching a young flower girl who was laying out her goods on the counter; choosing a magnificent bright red carnation, she handed it to the visitor with a slight bow:

- Happy arrival! Venice welcomes one of her newfound sons! Accept this flower, Excellenza. He will bring you happiness...

The flower girl was pretty, fresh, like her little mobile garden. Morosini accepted the gift and answered the girl's smile with a smile.

I will take this flower as a keepsake. What is your name?

- Desdemona.

Indeed, Venice itself met him!

Burying his nose in a carnation, Aldo inhaled the bitter aroma of the flower, then attached it to the buttonhole of his shabby uniform and, following Zaccaria, joined the fussy whirlpool that no war can cancel: hotel messengers shouted the names of their establishments, postal employees waited for their boat the correspondence will be loaded, the gondoliers will roam in search of early clients. And finally, a crowd of people disembarked from the sea tram, which arrived at the station of Santa Lucia.

Portal for the student. Self-training