The story of the sun, moon, and stars . ichness of the system as a whole; the immensevariety of the bodies contained in it; the perpetualrush and stir and whirl of life in every part. Cer-tainly there is no such thing as dull stagnationthroughout the family. First, we have the great, blazing, central sun; nota sun at rest, as regards the stars, but practically atrest as regards his own system, of which he is alwayshead and center. Then come the four smaller plan-ets, rapidly whirling round him, all journeying in thesame direction, and all having their oval pathways ly-ing on nearly the same fl
The story of the sun, moon, and stars . ichness of the system as a whole; the immensevariety of the bodies contained in it; the perpetualrush and stir and whirl of life in every part. Cer-tainly there is no such thing as dull stagnationthroughout the family. First, we have the great, blazing, central sun; nota sun at rest, as regards the stars, but practically atrest as regards his own system, of which he is alwayshead and center. Then come the four smaller plan-ets, rapidly whirling round him, all journeying in thesame direction, and all having their oval pathways ly-ing on nearly the same flat plane in space. Then thebroad belt of busy little planetoids. Then the fourgiant planets,—Jupiter nearly five times as far as ourearth from the sun; Saturn nearly twice as far as Ju- 122 MORE ABOUT THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 123 piter; Uranus nearly twice as far as Saturn; Neptune as far from Uranus as Uranus from Saturn,—all keeping on very nearly the same level as the four inner planets. And between and about these principal members of. POSITION OF PLANETS INFERIOR TO JUPITER—SHOWING THEZONE OF THE ASTEROIDS. the system, with their accompanying moons, we havethousands of comets flashing hither and thither, withlong, radiant trains; and myriads of meteorites, gatheredoften into dense, vast herds or families, but also scat-tered thickly throughout every part of the system, 124 STORY OF TH£ SUN, MOON, AND STARS. each tiny ball reflecting the suns rays with its littleglimmer of light. Broad reaches of black and empty space! Whereare they? Perhaps nowhere. We are very apt, inour ignorance, to imagine that where we see nothing,there must of necessity be nothing. But, for aughtwe know, the whole Solar System, not to speak ofsky-depths lying beyond, may be bright with reflect-ing bodies great and small, from the mighty Jupiterdown to the fine diamond-dust of countless this earth of ours we find no emptiness. Closerand closer examination with the microscope onlyshows ti
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookidstor, booksubjectastronomy
