The herald and news. [volume] (Newberry S.C.) 1903-1937, 1921-06-10
THE MOST DISTANT
THING KNOWN
By Garrett ?. Serviss


The farthest thing that the astrono-
mers have been able to reach, up to
the present time, is lone globular
star-cluster, called in the astronoml-
cal catalogues N. G. C. 7006 ,and sit
uated in the little constellation Del
phinus (the Dolphin. This remotest
outpost of the realm of light, station
ed on the utmost verge Of the abyss
of illimitable darkness that seems to
surround the system of the stars, ap-
pears a tiny misty dot in the tele-
scope; but there are other still timer
dots in the sky and nothing in the
aspect of N. G. C.. zoos would lead
the observer to suspect the tremen-
dous truth that in looking at it his
eye rests upon the very Ultima Thule
of the material universe.
This truth stands evident when the
parallax of N. G. C. zoos is calculat-
ed. The parallax comes out as
O.000015, or 15-1 100000 Of a second
of arc, which corresponds with dis
tanee of $1,000 parses or $4,000
light-years. Put into miles this be-
comes 1878 quadrillions or 1878
thousand millions of millions! That
is 1858 million times as great as
the distance between the earth and the
sum-,
Since, as shown above, it would
take light $4,000 years to travel
from N. G. C. to US, it is plain that we
see that cluster of distant stars by
light that started from them $4,000
years ago, or $4,000 years before
the traditional date of Adam, and
at least four times as long as the
time when the retreat of the great
ice sheet of the glacial period left
the northern hemisphere of the earth
open to the development of the hu-
man race.
When julius Caesar conjured
Gaul that light from N. G. c. 7006
was still 1850 millions of millions
of miles from the earth, or about
462 times as far away as the star
Alpha Centouri, although it had al
ready completed more than 99-100ths
of it's journey from that uttermost
campfire of sentinel suns kept burn
ing on the outermost verge of the
starry universe.
But these sentinels are worthy of
their great trust and task. They are
no petty luminaries. Their fires, so
faint appearing at our immense dis
tance, blaze gigantic on the dark
frontier to watching eyes that lurk
in the outer gloom of the deserts of
space.
The faintest of that company of
stellar guards are a hundred times
as bright as our sun, and the greater
ones are at least sixteen times bright
er yet. They belong to class of
solar organizations-the globular
clusters composed altogether of
giants. And strange fact is that,
as a rule, these lone assemblages
of mighty suns are to be found only
in the renaoter parts Of the visible,
or photographable, universe. 1t is
as if the greatest light units of the
universe, like the strongest battal-
ions, were kept near the borders.
1t is very interesting to take a
perspective, or depth-view, of the
stellar system as modern discoveries
disclose it.
The farthest edge Of the solar sys-
tenn is less than 5000 million miles
away. The nearest star, Alpha Cen
tauri, is 25,OOO,ooO million miles
away. The stars in the beautiful
group of the Hyades are 760,000.000
million miles away. The Great Neb-
ula of Orion is 3,600,o00,O00 million
miles away. The most distant stars
visible to the naked eye are 19,000,-
100000 miles away. The great
globular star cluster in Centaurus
Zone of the nearest of those troups
of giants) is 123, ,500,O0O,000 million
miles away. The front-line sentinel