"
And in the Book of Job we read--
"Is not God in the height of heaven? And behold the height of the stars,
how high they are!"
There are wonderful things to learn about the colour of the stars, some
yellow like our own sun, others of a dazzling whiteness, and others giving
out beautiful rainbow-coloured light. But these wonders you must study
by-and-by; just now we will speak first of their amazing number, as they
appear to our eyes when by the help of the telescope we peer deeper and
deeper into the blue depths of the sky. When alluding to the stars in a
general way we include the seven planets--one of them our own earth--which
move round our sun, and are as it were so near home that five of them may
be seen without the telescope--though not more than three are visible at
the same time--and also those myriads of "fixed stars," all of which are
suns, many of them much larger than our own glorious sun, and removed from
our ken by distances which our minds refuse to grasp.
I have been told that the number of stars which can be seen with the naked
eye is five thousand, but that only half that number are visible at the
same time.
If you ask me how many can be seen with the help of the telescope, I cannot
tell you, because more powerful glasses are constantly being made, only to
discover worlds beyond worlds, ever new and more distant, strewn in space
like golden dust, while stars hitherto invisible through the most powerful
telescope can now be made to leave the impress of their rays upon the
photographic plate--so that a great astronomer of our time can show us
pictures of "invisible stars.
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