MYSTERY OF THE STARS
Wonders of the Universe--Star Photography--The Infinity of Space.
In another chapter we have lightly touched upon the greatness of the
Universe, in the cosmos of which our earth is but an infinitesimal
speck. Even our sun, round which a system of worlds revolve and which
appears so mighty and majestic to us, is but an atom, a very small
one, in the infinitude of matter and as a cog, would not be missed in
the ratchet wheel which fits into the grand machinery of Nature.
If our entire solar system were wiped out of being, there would be
left no noticeable void among the countless systems of worlds and suns
and stars; in the immensity of space the sun with all his revolving
planets is not even as a drop to the ocean or a grain of sand to the
composition of the earth. There are millions of other suns of larger
dimensions with larger attendants wheeling around them in the
illimitable fields of space. Those stars which we erroneously call
"fixed" stars are the centers of other systems vastly greater, vastly
grander than the one of which our earth forms so insignificant a part.
Of course to us numbers of them appear, even when viewed through the
most powerful telescopes, only as mere luminous points, but that is
owing to the immensity of distance between them and ourselves. But the
number that is visible to us even with instrumental assistance can
have no comparison with the number that we cannot see; there is no
limit to that number; away in what to us may be called the background
of space are millions, billions, uncountable myriads of invisible suns
regulating and illuminating countless systems of invisible worlds. And
beyond those invisible suns and worlds is a region which thought cannot
measure and numbers cannot span. The finite mind of man becomes dazed,
dumbfounded in contemplation of magnitude so great and distance so
amazing. We stand not bewildered but lost before the problem of
interstellar space. Its length, breadth, height and circumference are
illimitable, boundless; the great eternal cosmos without beginning and
without end.
In order to get some idea of the vastness of interstellar space we may
consider a few distances within the limits of human conception. We
know that light travels at the rate of 186,000 miles a second, yet it
requires light over four years to reach us from the nearest of the
fixed stars, travelling at this almost inconceivable rate, and so far
away are some that their light travelling at the same rate from the
dawn of creation has never reached us yet or never will until our
little globule of matter disintegrates and its particles, its molecules
and corpuscles, float away in the boundless ether to amalgamate with
the matter of other flying worlds and suns and stars.
The nearest to us of all the stars is that known as _Alpha Centauri_.
Its distance is computed at 25,000,000,000,000 miles, which in our
notation reads twenty-five trillion miles. It takes light over four
years to traverse this distance. It would take the "Empire State
Express," never stopping night or day and going at the rate of
a mile a minute, almost 50,000,000 years to travel from the earth to
this star. The next of the fixed stars and the brightest in all the
heavens is that which we call _Sirius_ or the Dog Star. It is
double the distance of Alpha Centauri, that is, it is eight "light
years" away. The distances of about seventy other stars have been
ascertained ranging up to seventy or eighty "light years" away, but
of the others visible to the naked eye they are too far distant to
come within the range of trigonometrical calculation. They are out of
reach of the mathematical eye in the depth of space. But we know for
certain that the distance of none of these visible stars, without a
measurable parallax, is less than four million times the distance of
our sun from the earth. It would be useless to express this in figures
as it would be altogether incomprehensible. What then can be said of
the telescopic stars, not to speak at all of those beyond the power
of instruments to determine.
If a railroad could be constructed to the nearest star and the fare
made one cent a mile, a single passage would cost $250,000,000,000,
that is two hundred and fifty billion dollars, which would make a
94-foot cube of pure gold. All of the coined gold in the world amounts
to but $4,000,000,000 (four billion dollars), equal to a gold cube of
24 feet. Therefore it would take sixty times the world's stock of gold
to pay the fare of one passenger, at a cent a mile from the earth to
Alpha Centauri.
The light from numbers, probably countless numbers, of stars is so
long in coming to us that they could be blotted out of existence and
we would remain unconscious of the fact for years, for hundreds of
years, for thousands of years, nay to infinity. Thus if _Sirius_
were to collide with some other space traveler and be knocked into
smithereens as an Irishman would say, we would not know about it for
eight years. In fact if all the stars were blotted out and only the
sun left we should still behold their light in the heavens and be
unconscious of the extinction of even some of the naked-eye stars for
sixty or seventy years.
It is vain to pursue farther the unthinkable vastness of the visible
Universe; as for the invisible it is equally useless for even
imagination to try to grapple with its never-ending immensity, to
endeavor to penetrate its awful clouded mystery forever veiled from
human view.
In all there are about 3,000 stars visible to the naked eye in each
hemisphere. A three-inch pocket telescope brings about one million
into view. The grand and scientifically perfected instruments of our
great observatories show incalculable multitudes. Every improvement
in light-grasping power brings millions of new stars into the range
of instrumental vision and shows the "background" of the sky blazing
with the light of eye-invisible suns too far away to be separately
distinguished.
Great strides are daily being made in stellar photography. Plates are
now being attached to the telescopic apparatus whereby luminous heavenly
bodies are able to impress their own pictures. Groups of stars are
being photographed on one plate. Complete sets of these star photographs
are being taken every year, embracing every nook and corner of the
celestial sphere and these are carefully compared with one another to
find out what changes are going on in the heavens. It will not be long
before every star photographically visible to the most powerful
telescope will have its present position accurately defined on these
photographic charts.
When, the sensitized plate is exposed for a considerable time even
invisible stars photograph themselves, and in this way a great number
of stars have been discovered which no telescope, however powerful,
can bring within the range of vision. Tens of thousands of stars have
registered themselves thus on a single plate, and on one occasion an
impression was obtained on one plate of more than 400,000.
Astronomers are of the opinion that for every star visible to the naked
eye there are more than 50,000 visible to the camera of the telescope.
If this is so, then the number of visible stars exceeds 300,000,000
(three hundred millions).
But the picture taking power of the finest photographic lens has a
limit; no matter how long the exposure, it cannot penetrate beyond a
certain boundary into the vastness of space, and beyond its limits as
George Sterling, the Californian poet, says are--
"fires of unrecorded suns
That light a heaven not our own."
What is the limit? Answer philosopher, answer sage, answer astronomer,
and we have the solution of "the riddle of the Universe."
As yet the riddle still remains, the veil still hangs between the
knowable and the unknowable, between the finite and the infinite.
Science stands baffled like a wailing creature outside the walls of
knowledge importuning for admission. There is little, in truth no hope
at all, that she will ever be allowed to enter, survey all the fields
of space and set a limit to their boundaries.
Although the riddle of the universe still remains unsolved because
unsolvable, no one can deny that Astronomy has made mighty strides
forward during the past few years. What has been termed the "Old
Astronomy," which concerns itself with the determination of the
positions and motions of the heavenly bodies, has been rejuvenated and
an immense amount of work has been accomplished by concerted effort,
as well as by individual exertions.
The greatest achievements have been the accurate determination of the
positions of the fixed stars visible to the eye. Their situation is
now estimated with as unerring precision as is that of the planets of
our own system. Millions upon millions of stars have been photographed
and these photographs will be invaluable in determining the future
changes and motions of these giant suns of interstellar space.
Of our own system we now know definitely the laws governing it. Fifty
years ago much of our solar machinery was misunderstood and many things
were enveloped in mystery which since has been made very plain. The
spectroscope has had a wonderful part in astronomical research. It
first revealed the nature of the gases existing in the sun. It next
enabled us to study the prominences on any clear day. Then by using
it in the spectro-heliograph we have been enabled to photograph the
entire visible surface of the sun, together with the prominences at
one time. Through the spectro-heliograph we know much more about what
the central body of our system is doing than our theories can explain.
Fresh observations are continually bringing to light new facts which
must soon be accounted for by laws at present unknown.
Spectroscopic observations are by no means confined to the sun. By
them we now study the composition of the atmospheres of the other
planets; through them the presence of chemical elements known on the
earth is detected in vagrant comets, far-distant stars and dimly-shining
nebulae. The spectroscope also makes it possible to measure the
velocities of objects which are approaching or receding from us. For
instance we know positively that the bright star called Aldebaran near
the constellation of the Pleiades is retreating from us at a rate of
almost two thousand miles a minute. The greatest telescopes in the
world are now being trained on stars that are rushing away towards the
"furthermost" of space and in this way astronomers are trying to get
definite knowledge as to the actual velocity with which the celestial
bodies are speeding.
It is only within the past few years that photography has been applied
to astronomical development. In this connection, more accurate results
are obtained by measuring the photographs of stellar spectra than by
measuring the spectra themselves. Photography with modern rapid plates
gives us, with a given telescope, pictures of objects so faint that
no visual telescope of the same size will reveal them. It is in this
way that many of the invisible stars have impressed themselves upon
exposed plates and given us a vague idea of the immensity in number
of those stars which we cannot view with eye or instrument.
Though we have made great advancement, there are many problems yet
even in regard to our own little system of sun worlds which clamor
loudly for solution. The sun himself represents a crowd of pending
problems. His peculiar mode of rotation; the level of sunspots; the
constitution of the photospheric cloud-shell, its relation to faculae
which rise from it, and to the surmounting vaporous strata; the nature
of the prominences; the alternations of coronal types; the affinities
of the zodiacal light--all await investigation.
A great telescope has recently shown that one star in eighteen on the
average is a visual double--is composed of two suns in slow revolution
around their common center of mass. The spectroscope using the
photographic plate, has established within the last decade that one
star in every five or six on the average is attended by a companion
so near to it as to remain invisible in the most powerful telescopes,
and so massive as to swing the visible star around in an elliptic
orbit.
The photography of comets, nebulae and solar coronas has made the study
of these phenomena incomparably more effective than the old visual
methods. There is no longer any necessity to make "drawings" of them.
The old dread of comets has been relegated into the shade of ignorance.
The long switching tails regarded so ominously and from which were
anticipated such dire calamities as the destruction of worlds into
chaos have been proven to be composed of gaseous vapors of no more
solidity than the "airy nothingness of dreams."
The earth in the circle of its orbit passed through the tail of Halley's
comet in May, 1910, and we hadn't even a pyrotechnical display of fire
rockets to celebrate the occasion. In fact there was not a single
celestial indication of the passage and we would not have known only
for the calculations of the astronomer. The passing of a comet now,
as far as fear is concerned, means no more, in fact not as much, as
the passing of an automobile.
Science no doubt has made wonderful strides in our time, but far as
it has gone, it has but opened for us the first few pages of the book
of the heavens--the last pages of which no man shall ever read. For
aeons upon aeons of time, worlds and suns, and systems of worlds and
suns, revolved through the infinity of space, before man made his
appearance on the tiny molecule of matter we call the earth, and for
aeons upon aeons, for eternity upon eternity, worlds and suns shall
continue to roll and revolve after the last vestige of man shall have
disappeared, nay after the atoms of earth and sun and all his attending
planets of our system shall have amalgamated themselves with other
systems in the boundlessness of space; destroyed, obliterated,
annihilated, they shall never be, for matter is indestructible. When
it passes from one form it enters another; the dead animal that is
cast into the earth lives again in the trees and shrubs and flowers
and grasses that grow in the earth above where its body was cast. Our
earth shall die in course of time, that is, its particles will pass
into other compositions and it will be so of the other planets, of the
suns, of the stars themselves, for as soon as the old ones die there
will ever be new forms to which to attach themselves and thus the
process of world development shall go on forever.
The nebulae which astronomers discover throughout the stellar space
are extended masses of glowing gases of different forms and are worlds
in process of formation. Such was the earth once. These gases solidify
and contract and cool off until finally an inhabited world, inhabited
by some kind of creatures, takes its place in the whirling galaxy of
systems.
The stars which appear to us in a yellow or whitish yellow light are
in the heyday of their existence, while those that present a red haze
are almost burnt out and will soon become blackened, dead things
disintegrating and crumbling and spreading their particles throughout
space. It is supposed this little earth of ours has a few more million
years to live, so we need not fear for our personal safety while in
mortal form.
To us ordinary mortals the mystery as well as the majesty of the heavens
have the same wonderful attraction as they had for the first of our
race. Thousands of years ago the black-bearded shepherds of Eastern
lands gazed nightly into the vaulted dome and were struck with awe as
well as wonder in the contemplation of the glittering specks which
appeared no larger than the pebbles beneath their feet.
We in our time as we gaze with unaided eye up at the mighty disk of
the so called Milky Way, no longer regard the scintillating points
glittering like diamonds in a jeweler's show-case, with feelings of
awe, but the wonder is still upon us, wonder at the immensity of the
works of Him who built the earth and sky, who, "throned in height
sublime, sits amid the cherubim," King of the Universe, King of kings
and Lord of lords. With a deep faith we look up and adore, then
reverently exclaim,--"Lord, God! wonderful are the works of Thy Hands."