Sirius, the most brilliant star of our sky, transported to that distance, would be 3,500 times farther away than it is in reality, and it would send us 12 million times less light. It would be a small point, still within the range of the new photographic processes. It would be a telescopic star of the 18th magnitude.
This sidereal milestone would be far from marking the limit of the space accessible to telescopic investigation, which includes stars of the 20th magnitude, and which, according to ingenious calculations, is occupied by about 100 million suns. And indeed, as I advanced in my celestial voyage, I crossed new abysses and discovered far ahead and above me new stars which became suns, shone in the night and appeared single, double, treble, quadruple, even quintuple, radiating a silver or golden light, or emitting the most vivid and various colours; and I guessed in passing at celestial earths peopled by unknown humanities floating in these rays, before these worlds in turn rolled away and disappeared beneath me in the night. They rushed with different speeds in every direction through space, like luminous globes in the bouquets of fireworks, and seemed to fly away in a starry rain.
When I reached the confines of our sidereal universe, the suns and systems became sparser, and as I continued my ascent I found myself engulfed in a black and desert void whence I could see the outer form of our universe, resembling one of those many star clusters which are seen in every telescopic field. This cluster became smaller and smaller as I flew on into the outer darkness.
Then, in the infinite night I perceived above me another universe which appeared in space as a pale and distant nebula, and I understood that all we can see with our eyes in the clearest night and all that telescopic vision has yet allowed us to discover represent nothing but a local region in an animated immensity, and that there are other universes besides that of which our Sun forms a star.
(7) IN INFINITE SPACE
I approached this second universe, which became larger and larger like an archipelago of stars, and I soon arrived at its outskirts. As I traversed it from end to end I saw that it also was composed of several million suns separated from each other by thousands of millions of miles. Then I found beyond it another dark abyss resembling that which I had crossed to reach the second universe.
Continuing my flight, I saw a third, and I crossed it. A fourth approached, then another, and yet another. And as I crossed those deserts which separated them, in whatever direction my gaze endeavoured to pierce the void, everywhere it discovered new universes in the distance.
The splendid spiral nebulæ are not balls of gas but agglomerations of suns, Milky Ways situated outside our sidereal universe.
Then I understood that all the stars which have ever been observed in the sky, the millions of luminous points which constitute the Milky Way, the innumerable celestial bodies, suns of every magnitude and of every degree of brightness, solar systems, planets, and satellites, which by millions and hundreds of millions succeed each other in the void around us, that whatever human tongues have designated by the name of universe, do not in the infinite represent more than an archipelago of celestial islands and not more than a city in the grand total of population, a town of greater or lesser importance.
In this city of the limitless empire, in this town of a land without frontiers, our Sun and its system represent a single point, a single house among millions of other habitations. Is our solar system a palace or a hovel in this great city? Probably a hovel.