The story of the sun, moon, and stars . ng round one center. Probablymost of these clusters are themselves a part of thecollection of stars to which our sun belongs. If this be so, and if worlds are traveling amongthe suns—as may well be, since they are doubtlessquite far enough apart for each sun to have his ownlittle or great system of planets—what sights must beseen by the inhabitants of such planets! We do not indeed know the distance between theseparate suns of a cluster, which may be far greaterthan appears to us. But if astronomers calculaterightly, they are near enough together to shed
The story of the sun, moon, and stars . ng round one center. Probablymost of these clusters are themselves a part of thecollection of stars to which our sun belongs. If this be so, and if worlds are traveling amongthe suns—as may well be, since they are doubtlessquite far enough apart for each sun to have his ownlittle or great system of planets—what sights must beseen by the inhabitants of such planets! We do not indeed know the distance between theseparate suns of a cluster, which may be far greaterthan appears to us. But if astronomers calculaterightly, they are near enough together to shed bright GROUPS AND CLUSTERS OF SUNS. 307 light on all sides of a planet revolving in their said planet might perhaps not have within viewa single sun equal in apparent size to our sun as seenfrom earth; yet thousands of lesser suns, shiningbrightly in the firmament night and day, would causea radiance which we never enjoy. No, not night. In such a world there could be nonight. Worlds in the midst of a star-cluster must be. the; great nebula in andromeda, compared withsize of the soi,ar system. regions of perpetual day. No night, no starry heaven,no sunrise lights or sunset glories, no shadow minglingwith sunshine, but one continual, ceaseless blaze ofbrightness. We can hardly picture, even in imagina-tion, such a condition of things. Besides star-clusters there are also nebulae. Theword nebula comes from the Latin word for cloud,and the nebulae are so named from their cloudlikeappearance. It is not easy to draw a line of clear division be- 308 STORY OF THE SUN, MOON, AND STARS. tween nebulae and distant star-clusters; for both haveat first sight the same dim, white, cloudy look. Inpast days the star-clusters were included by astrono-mers under the general class of nebulae. And as withthe star-clusters, so with many of the nebulae, themore powerful telescopes of modern days have shownthem to be great clusters, or systems, or galaxies ofstars, at vast distances from
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookidstor, booksubjectastronomy
