Connecticut western news., 1910-10-06
A RAPID JOURNEY

couatry. Have you any idea how far you travel when you are out for an hours stroll? Possibly you walk three miles in that hours stroll, but that does not by any means represent, the distance you travel. Haye you ever figured it out? If not try it and prove it for yourself. Here is the way figure it: The earth turns on it's axis every twenty-four hours. For the sake of round figures we will call the earth's circumference, 24,000 miles, and so I must have travelled dur ing the hours stroll 1000 miles in the axial turn of the earth. But this is not all. The earth makes a journey around the sun every year, and long but rapid trip it is. The distance of our planet from the sun we will put at 92,000,O00 miles. This is the radius of tho earth's orbit-half the diameter of the circle, as we call it. The whole diameter is there fore, 184, 900 miles, and the circumfer- ence being the diameter, multiplied by 3.1416 is about 578, 100000.
 This amazing distance the earth travels in it's yearly journey, and dividing it by 365, find the daily speed about 1,586,- 900. Then I get the distance I rode around the sun during my hours walk, divided again by gwenty-four, and the result is 66,00O miles.
 But this s not the end of my hours trip The sun with it's entire brood of planets is moving in space at the rate of 166, 100000 miles year. That. is at rate of little more than 498, ,000 miles day. or IS ,250 miles an hour. So adding nay three miles of leg travel to the hours axial movement of the earth, this to the earth's orbital journey and that again to the earth's excursion with the sun, and I find that I travelled in that hour 85,253 miles, At the end of the journey l had good appetite for dinner. Would not you have had?
 How few seem to have any idea as to space. We look at night into the starry heavens and see those wonderful con- stellations; those strange worlds and we wonder at them, but more marvellous yet is the vast distance some of them are from our planet.
 Take for example the fixed stars. We call them ''fxed when they are separ- ated from us by distance so great that 8 change in their orbits make no precep7 tible difference in their positions, even though such fixed" bodies may travel an orbit 100, ,000, 900 miles in circumfsr- ence in the course of a year. These fixed" stars may be only few paltry millions of miles away, or they may be billions, or even trillions of miles from the pigmy planet upon which we have our being.
 The most distant of all the orbs, as far as astronomers know, is the fixed star Sigma Draconis, which is separated from us by distance so great that millions and billions of miles are only as inches and feet compared to the miles inter vening between our earth and the sun. Astronomers are noted for their propen- sity for indicating stellar distances with robust and well developed strings of figures, but in the case of Sigma Draconis the distance is so great that figures will fail to give any conception whatever.
 Light travels at the rate of 186,330 miles per second, and, reckoning the day at twenty-four hours, fifty-six min utes and four seconds in length and the year at 365A days, an astronomical light year will equal 5,854, ,066, 148, ,330 miles. These figures which represent the distance which light will travel in year, when multiplied by 129 gives us the distance to Sigma Draconis, or in other words the figures, that star is 129 light years, or 756, 900, ,ooO, ,oo0, ,OOO 0O0, ,oO0, miles from us. If Sigma had been plotted out of existence before the Rev olutionary war began, it's light would still be shinning as though the star were yet in place.
 A great study is astronomy, and the marvels of our planitary system grow upon one as one reads and calculates these vast distances separating us from those celestial bodies. Possibly you may never have realized before some of these facts When next you are enjoying your walk about Canaan or elsewhere, you may realize more forcible than ever the vast distances you are travelling in your short circuit,