Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 December 1879 — Immensity of the Stars. [ARTICLE]

Immensity of the Stars.

It is known that the stars are true suns, that some of them are larger than our own sun, and that around these enormous centers of heat and light revolve planets on which life certainly exists. Our sun is distant from us 38,000,000 leagues, but these stars are distant at least 500,000 times as far —a distance that, in fact, is incommensurable and unimaginable for us. ‘ Viewed with the unaided eye, the stars and the planets look alike; that is, appear to have the same diameter. But, viewed through the telescope, while the planets are seen to possess clearly appreciable diameters, the stars are still only mere luminous points. The most powerful of existing telescopes, that of Melbourne, which magnifies 8,000 times, gives us an image of one of our planets possessing an apparent diameter of several degrees. Jupiter, for instance, which, seen with the naked eye, appears as a star of the first magnitude, with a diameter of forty five degrees at the most, will in the telescope have its diameter multiplied 8,000 times, and will be seen as if it occupied in the heavens an angle of 100 degrees. Meanwhile, a star alongside of Jupiter, and which to the eye is as bright as that planet, will still be a Bimple dimensionless point. Nevertheless, that star is thousands of times more voluminous than the planet. Divide the distance between us and that planet by 8,000, and you have for result a distance relatively very small; but divide by 8,000 the enormous number of leagues which represents the distance of a star, and there remain a number of leagues too great to permit of the stars being seen by ns in a perceptible form. In considering Jupiter, or any of the planets, we are filled with wonder at the thought that this little luminous point might hide not only all the visible stars, but a number 5,000 fold greater—for of stars visible to our eyes there are only about 5,000. All the stars of these many constellations, as the Great Bear, Cassiopeia, Orion, Andromeda, all the stars of the zodiac, even all the stars which are visible only from the earth’s southern hemisphere, might be set in one plane, side by side, with no one overlapping another, even without the slightest contact between star and star, and yet they would occupy so small a space that, were it to be multiplied 5,000 fold, that space would be entirely covered by the disk of Jupiter, albeit that disk to us seems to be an inappreciable point— Prof.J. Vinot.