The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-06-04
THE WONDERS OF THE SKY
By CECIL YEARTY nRham at Cn mp Hill Southern Industrial Institute
Honor Essay by Birn

It was a beautiful evening in late April when walked out into an open field to observe the heavens There were thous- ards of stars just beginning to come out and twinkle in the blue sky. In the east could be seen the moon. barely peeping
 above the horizon. Over in the west glowed very beautiful star called Venus. She Is a sister planet to the earth. Venus is a little smaller than the earth, her diameter being only about 300 miles less than that of the earth. Just at the zenith
 I could see a glittering, reddish planet
 called Mars. He is a wonder to us all.
 Through the telescope we see markings on
 his disc which have been supposed to be
 land and water little farther eastward
 see Saturn sailing on his journey. He
 is very interesting, on account of his
 three rings.
 There are other planets, but none were
 visible at this time. They are Mercury,
 Uranus, Neptune and Jupiter. Jupiter
 is our largest planet His diameter is
 s7, 600 miles. He was bright evening star
 last month. The other planets are so far
 away that they are practically invisible,
 and are of no particular interest. Could
 men live on these planets? Men live on
 the earth, and 1t is planet. If man could suddenly be taken to Mercury it is
 probable that he would not find air enough to breathe, and 1t Is likely tha. the planet Is too hot for a man to live there, because Mercury Is 50 near the sun. I think we will find all the other planets either too cold for men to exist on. These planets, with the sun, which IS the central body, and the comets, make what we call our solar system. The other stars are called fixed stars. They are so called because they do not change
 their relative position toward one another
 They move across the sky as if they were painted on revolving canvas. They are classified according to their apparent size and brightness. Beginning with the brightest, they are called stars of the first. second and third magnitude. They are in groups called cancellations. The cancellations we see now are Orion, Tau
 rus. Emini Canis Minor Canis Major and several others.
 The nearest star Alpha Centuar, twenty-five billion miles away. It takes light three and one-half years to reach us from this star. Canopus Is the farth- est away of any star that we know about. It is giant among stars, and is forty-nine thousand times as bright as our sun. It is four hundred and eighty nine light years away. This star can be seen only south of Tennessee in the United States.
 After telling of my evening scene, let me relate few facts about our sun and moon:
 The sun is like one of the thousands of stars we see every clear night The sun shines by his own light, just as an electric light or candle shine by their own light. If you could blow out the
 sun as you can blow out a candle all the stars would keep on shining, but all the planets and moons would cease to shine The sun is made up of burning gases and white-hot metals. If you look into ar | iron fudnace where the white-hot iron l is boiling you can get kind of picture 1 of the sun. The surface of the sun is ninety-thousand times as bright as would l be candle flame of the same size Only
 small portion of the heat radiated by l the sun reaches the earth. The suns diameter is s66, 400 miles. His volume is 1,3O5, 900 times as great as the earth. He l is 750 times as great as all the planet. l and moons of his solar system combined l The moon is a secondary planet, re
 volving around the earth. The moon wa thrown off by the earth when this plane