Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 November 1882 — THE STARS. [ARTICLE]

THE STARS.

The Astounding Velocity with Which They Shoot Through Space. {From the New Orleans Tiznes-Democnt.) The movement of all celestial bodies, although varying, it is true, is characterized by a general velocity which staggers human imagination. No can-non-ball has a muzzle velocity comparable to the speed with which the laziest planet traveres space or with which the corpse of the oldest moon whirls about its centre. There are one hundred millions of suns known to astronomers—from stars* of the first magnitude like V,ega or Sirius, compared with which our sun is like a mere farthing candle besides the most powerful electric arc, down to those luiputian solar centers which are hardly as large as some planets of our celestial family. All of these are rushing through the eternities with electrical speed—passing, crossing, interchanging places in that enormous ragged belt of worlds and suns whereof we form but one invisable grain of matter—that astral ring so • huge that we behold one side of it only as an arch of white mist spanning our sky upon, lucid nights. There is really no such thing as a fixed star—the fire-ships of heaven never anchor; no vessel of those innumerable astral navies enters any port and even the fragments of the wrecks of them drift restlessly forover through the shoreless ocean of space. Still they do not seem to our eyes to move. Sirius is rushing away from us at the rate of 22 miles a second; alpha Corona at the awful speed of 48 miles a second; five lights of the Great Bear (Ursa Major) ore moving from us into unknown regions at the speed of 19 miles a second; while Vega, that terrific ocean of white lightning, is rushing toward us at the rate of 44 miles a second, and Alpha of the Great Bear at the rate of 46. We cannot even imagine such motion! Nevertheless that astral universe, to all save astronomers, seems immutable as destiny, changeless as God.

Why is this ? It is because of the vast distances and the last lights. The astounding courses of the stars are perceived by man only as almost imperceptible changes of position—deplacements so small that they are measured by fractions of seconds of the celestial arc. Now a second is the 60th part of a minute, which is the 60th part of a degree. whifch is the 360th part of the. huge celestial circle. (Flammarion treats this fact very impressively in his grand Astronomic Populairej The sun’s disk appears to us to have a diameter of 1,860 seconds.. Suppose that, the visible movement of a star should be exactly one astronomical second a year, that movement would only appear to us as the 1,860 th part of the diameter of the sun’s visible disk. Consequently it would be 1,%60 years before that star would seem to us co have moved even a distance equal to the diameter of the sun’s apparent disk. But there are very few stars which can travel even one second a year; therefore, since the time of Jesus Christ few have visibly moved a distance equal to the visible diameter of the sun. Arcturus is one exception; travelling at the rate of 5,400,000 miles a day—a veritable leviathan among suns—he would still require 800 years to change his position even by the tiny distance equal to the apparent diameter of the moon’s disk. His speed is three seconds a year nevertheless a fine thread would cover with its breadth the distance traversed by him in the field of vision during twelve long months. There is one star even swifter—a star which has no name and is marked No. 1,830 in Groonfbridge’s catalogue. Its deplacement is seven seconds a year; its speed is nearly fifty million miles a day;— thus it requires only 255 years to visibly change position by 1,860 seconds of the arc, or the distance equal to the apparent diameter of the sun’s disk. Well might Job exclaim: “Behold the height of the stars.” We know, however, that the heaven which the eye of the first Pharaohs beheld was not as the heaven of to-day, and that the star-gazers of Babylon saw constellations now invisible to those Arabs who haunt the banks of the Euphrates. The time will come when men shall behold the Southern cross in ’ these latitudes, although it shall have ceased to illuminate the pampas of South America. The polar star is bid ding us farewell; while Vega, supposed by some to be ,a sun twelve thousand times larger than our own, and infinitely brighter, shall take his place in the northern heaven. For there shall be new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be in remembrance.