St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1889-02-28
SUNS AND sYsTEMs WITHOUT END.

Just how many stars the Lick tele-
scope at Mt. Hamilton, California,
can reveal is matter of estimation,
for it would be physically impossible
to count them Certainly the num-
Der cannot be less than 5000, 900,
and probably not less than 100, OOO,
600. 1t is capable of showing at
least twice as many stars as the big
Washington telescope. In certain
regions of the sky, the observer can
see at one view, within the minute
circle included in the telescope field,
many times more stars than are visi-
BILE to the naked eye in the whole
heavens. But the most significant
thing of all is the appearance of the
Milky Way as seen from M cunt Ham
ilton. Probably every amateur as
tronomer, gazing through his three
or four inch telescope at that mar
vellOus procession of distant suns,
and perceiving that beyond those
which the telescope has revealed
were others which he could not see,
but whose presence was manifested
by the soft glow of light forming a
background to the golden multitude
of visible stars, has wished for a
larger telescope than his vision might
embrace the whole height and breadth
and depth of the starry creation.
And, no matter how large his tele-
scope, every astronomer has at times
felt the same desire, and strained his
eyes in vain to catch still feebler and
more distant glimmerings out of the
depths.
In places it has even seemed that
the edges of the visible creation had
been reached; gaps have been found
in the galaxy through which only
the blackness of outer space appear
ed. Yet the end has not been found
even with the Lick telescope. While
ii has brought into view uncOunted
thousands of stars unseen before in
the Milky Way, it has not touched
bottom; beyond its utmost reach the
observers know from the still unre
solved luminosity of the remOter fir
mament, other solar multitudes are
shining, which await the application
of yet nightier telescope powers in
order to be disclosed to our ewes as
separate SUNS.
On the other hand, many of the
faint stars owe their lack of bril-
lance not to their smallness, but to
their distance. For instance, Sirius,
the Dog Star, a Respondent phenom-
enon in the winter sky, appears TWEEN
ty times as bright to our eyes as the
Pole star; yet, according to some re-
cent Investigations, the latter is &C
tually the greater body of the two,
emitting ninety times as much light
as our sun, while Sirius cmits only
forty times as much.
1t is in the ability not only to dis
cover the existence of millions of un-
known stars, but in some degree to
measure and compare the actual size
and brilliancy of other suns with
ours, that the astronomers of this
day appeal most strongly to the pop
ular imagination. 1t is sounding the
depths of space to some purpose when
we obtain evidence that they abound
with the utmost variety of material
creations. finished and unfinished,
which in their constitution, their
manner of development, and their
genealogical functions may be COM
pared with the globe on whose sur
face we live and the sun that makes
our living possible.
Such views of the heavens as have
been obtained with the Lick telescope
within the past year, revealing here
new forms of nebule, there strange
and insignificant intermingling of
nebulous and solar masses, and in
other directions measurelesS extern
sions of the starry system, ranks and
professions of life-stirring suns,
reaching on and on without end, I'M
til their rays are swallowed up in
immensely of distance, give an over
whelming and yet stimulating sense
of the enormous, unthinkable activi-
ties of the living universe New
York SIM