Imagine the stars thus
scattered from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and keep this
little finger-ring in mind as the orbit of the earth, and one may
have some idea of the extent of the universe.
One of the most beautiful stars in the heavens, and one that can
be seen most of the year, is a Lyrae, or Alpha of the Lyre, known
also as Vega. In a spring evening it may be seen in the northeast,
in the later summer near the zenith, in the autumn in the
northwest. On the scale we have laid down with the earth's orbit
as a finger-ring, its distance would be some eight or ten miles.
The small stars around it in the same constellation are probably
ten, twenty, or fifty times as far.
Now, the greatest fact which modern science has brought to light
is that our whole solar system, including the sun, with all its
planets, is on a journey towards the constellation Lyra. During
our whole lives, in all probability during the whole of human
history, we have been flying unceasingly towards this beautiful
constellation with a speed to which no motion on earth can
compare. The speed has recently been determined with a fair degree
of certainty, though not with entire exactness; it is about ten
miles a second, and therefore not far from three hundred millions
of miles a year.
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