Connecticut western news., 1922-12-07
REMARKABLE STORY ON THE THOUSANDS OF STARS
 - No End to the Universe, Says Marcus H.
 Rogers
NLY 5000 VISIBLE
Article Is Sample Supplement to the Berkshire "Sun"
 Birthday Edition

The following remarkable story of
 the stars, by Marcus H. Rogers of Mill River, is issued as a supplement to the Berkshire "Sun", now in the printing. MT. Rogers is we'll known as former journalist, yet since early childhood he has made an ex- haustive study of astronomy. The information which he has gleaned is intensely interesting.
 When, in our survey of the uni verse, we leave our own solar sys- tenn, immense as we know it to be, and plunge into the boundless depths of space, to investigate the Stars, we begin to realize that all we leave be- hind is but as one single drop of water to all of the oceans of the earth!
 "The total number of stars visible to unaided vision is less than five thousand: but it is estimated that by telescopic and photographic gid, we certainly know of the existence of fully hundred million suns, most of them absolutely invisible to human sight with the aid of the largest and most powerful telescope ever con ] structed.
 "How the astronomer can 'discov- err suns which he is unable GO see, is easily explained. The human eye is incapable of accommodating light. If we look at star for an hour, we see it no more distinctly than at first. But fortunately for astrono- mical advancement, the photographic plate has that quality, and thus it happens that when a photographic plate is in a camera, attached to a powerful telescope and held in exact position upon some chosen guide star for four hours myriads of stars which are too far away and too faint to be visible to human sight in that telescope, will so have impressed themselves upon the plate, that when it is developed, there is absolute proof of their existence, and they are then carefully mapped anG counted. The amazing multitude of suns in a small space in the sky is demonstrated in the little group of stars composing the Pleiades, appar- ently the size of a tin pan, where most people can count six, and sharp sighted persons can see seven, by the | aid of photography, there have been mapped and counted total of 2326 l stars in that little group!
 "All of the innumerable stars we see or know of, are suns like our own, and we are only able to know l of them because they shine by their own light. Of the countless millions | of worlds like this one we call our own-which revolve around | them, we know nothing, being in- visible; but many are indicated, be- cause there are thousands of stars called variable" their change of brightness being attributed to dark planets, like the earth, (probably in- habited,) revolving around, and par tially eclipsing them to our sight.
 Among the many millions of stars the nearest one to the earth Is Alpha Centauri, a first magnitude star, at the left of the Southern Cross, not visible in northern attitudes. We saw it finely in Porto Rico.
 "Our unit of a mile is wholly in- adequate to convey any conception Of celestial distances: so the Veloc- ity of light has been adopted, flying 186,OO0 miles a second,-twelve mil lion miles a minute-coming from the sun in eight minutes, while from Alpha Centauri, four years and three months are required it's light to reach the earth! Forty-fve years from Polaris! :.
 "It is an appalling thought, when we strive to comprehend it, that there is no boundary of the uni verse! That if one could go with the inconceivable velocity Of light twelve million miles a minute--in any or every direction, for a thou sand million years, he would 5e no nearer any boundary than when he started. Can you grasp it: that -(Continued on page Al