The story of the sun, moon, and stars . the Milky Way? It is made up ofstars. So much we know. As the astronomer turnshis telescope to the zone of faintly-gleaming light, hefinds stars appearing behind stars in countless multi-tudes; and the stronger his telescope, the more thewhite light changes into distant stars. Our sun we believe to be one of the stars of theMilky Way; merely one star among millions of stars ;merely one golden grain among the millions of spark-ling gold-dust grains scattered lavishly through crea-tion. Scattered, not recklessly, not by chance, butplaced, arranged, and gui
The story of the sun, moon, and stars . the Milky Way? It is made up ofstars. So much we know. As the astronomer turnshis telescope to the zone of faintly-gleaming light, hefinds stars appearing behind stars in countless multi-tudes; and the stronger his telescope, the more thewhite light changes into distant stars. Our sun we believe to be one of the stars of theMilky Way; merely one star among millions of stars ;merely one golden grain among the millions of spark-ling gold-dust grains scattered lavishly through crea-tion. Scattered, not recklessly, not by chance, butplaced, arranged, and guided each by its Makers up-holding hand. 304 GROUPS AND CLUSTERS OF SUNS. 305 The Milky Way, or the Galaxy, as it has beencalled, has great interest for astronomers. Many havebeen the attempts made to discover its actual size, itsreal shape, how many stars it contains, how far it ex-tends ; but to all such questions the only safe answersto be returned are fenced around with perhaps* and may be. There are many very remarkable clusters of. A CLUSTER OF STARS IN CENTAURUS. stars to be seen in the heavens—some few visible asfaint spots of light to the naked eye, though the greaternumber are only to be seen through a with the naked eye, or in telescopes of varyingpower, they show first as mere glimmers of light,which, viewed with a more powerful telescope, sepa-rate into clusters of distant stars. The most common shape of these clusters is glob-ular—to the eye appearing simply round. Stars gather20 306 story of the sun, moon, and stars. densely near the center, and gradually open out toa thin scattering about the edge. Thousands of sunsare often thus collected into one cluster. The clusters are to be seen in all parts of the sky;but the greater number seem to be gathered into thespace covered by the Milky Way and by the famoussouth Magellanic Clouds. Some of them are beautifully colored; as, for in-stance, a cluster in Toucan, not visible from England,the center
Size: 1573px × 1589px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookidstor, booksubjectastronomy
