The story of the sun, moon, and stars . tars which shine withhim in the day-time. The zodiac is an imaginarybelt in the heavens, sixteen or eighteen degrees wide,containing the twelve constellations through whichthe sun passes. And as he passes from point to pointof his pathway, he constantly conceals from us freshgroups of stars by day, and allows fresh groups to ap-pear by gen-erally, however,the stars remainthe same yearafter year, cen-tury after centu-ry. The groupsmay still be seenas of old, fixedand unchanging. THE p^iades. What are these stars? Stars and planets haveboth
The story of the sun, moon, and stars . tars which shine withhim in the day-time. The zodiac is an imaginarybelt in the heavens, sixteen or eighteen degrees wide,containing the twelve constellations through whichthe sun passes. And as he passes from point to pointof his pathway, he constantly conceals from us freshgroups of stars by day, and allows fresh groups to ap-pear by gen-erally, however,the stars remainthe same yearafter year, cen-tury after centu-ry. The groupsmay still be seenas of old, fixedand unchanging. THE p^iades. What are these stars? Stars and planets haveboth been spoken about. There is a great differencebetween the two. Perhaps if you were asked whether the sun is mostlike to a star or a planet, you would be rather at a loss;and many who have admired the brilliant eveningstar, Venus, often to be seen after sunset, would besurprised to learn that the evening star is in reality nostar at all. A star is a sun. Our sun is nothing more nor lessthan a star. Each one of the so-called fixed stars,. 20 STORY OK THE SUN, MOON, AND STARS. that you see shining at night in the sky, is a sun likeour sun; only some of the stars are larger suns andsome are smaller suns than ours. The main reason why our sun looks so much largerand brighter than the stars is, that he is so very muchnearer to us. The stars are one and all at enormousdistances from the earth. By and by we will go moreclosely into the matter of their distance, comparedwith the distance of the sun. At present it is enough to say that if many of thestars were placed just as near to us as our sun isplaced, they would look just as large and bright;while there are some that would look a great deallarger and brighter. And if our sun were to travelaway from us, to the distance of the very nearestof the little twinkling stars, he would dwindle downand down in size and brilliancy, till at last we shouldnot be able to tell him apart from the rest of thestars. I have told you that the stars are
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookidstor, booksubjectastronomy
