But celestial space is unlimited, and we must not suppose that these seven thousand stars that fascinate our eyes and enrich our Heavens, without which our nights would be black, dark, and empty,[5] comprise the whole of Creation. They only represent the vestibule of the temple.
Where our vision is arrested, a larger, more powerful eye, that is developing from century to century, plunges its analyzing gaze into the abysses, and reflects back to the insatiable curiosity of science the light of the innumerable suns that it discovers. This eye is the lens of the optical instruments. Even opera-glasses disclose stars of the seventh magnitude. A small astronomical objective penetrates to the eighth and ninth orders. More powerful instruments attain the tenth. The Heavens are progressively transformed to the eye of the astronomer, and soon he is able to reckon hundreds of thousands of orbs in the night. The evolution continues, the power of the instrument is developed; and the stars of the eleventh and twelfth magnitudes are discovered successively, and together number four millions. Then follow the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth magnitudes. This is the sequence:
| 7th magnitude | 13,000. |
| 8th magnitude | 40,000. |
| 9th magnitude | 120,000. |
| 10th magnitude | 380,000. |
| 11th magnitude | 1,000,000. |
| 12th magnitude | 3,000,000. |
| 13th magnitude | 9,000,000. |
| 14th magnitude | 27,000,000. |
| 15th magnitude | 80,000,000. |
Accordingly, the most powerful telescopes of the day, reenforced by celestial photography, can bring a stream of more than 120 millions of stars into the scope of our vision.
The photographic map of the Heavens now being executed comprises the first fourteen magnitudes, and will give the precise position of some 40,000,000 stars, distributed over 22,054 sheets, forming a sphere 3 meters 44 centimeters in diameter.
The boldest imagination is overwhelmed by these figures, and fails to picture such millions of suns—formidable and burning globes that roll through space, sweeping their systems along with them. What furnaces are there! what unknown lives! what vast immensities!
And again, what enormous distances must separate the stars, to admit of their free revolution in the ether! In what abysses, at what a distance from our terrestrial atom, must these magnificent and dazzling Suns pursue the paths traced for them by Destiny!