This path of stars, called the Milky Way, stretches entirely around the sky, or seems to do so, because our solar system rests almost within its center—"almost" meaning within about 60,000 light years, which is comparatively close to the center of a Galaxy some 300,000 light years in diameter. If we could step off the earth and look at these stars they would appear as a gigantic wreath; as it is, we see one half of the wreath from the northern hemisphere and the other half by traveling to the southern hemisphere. At least this much of the ancient conception of the universe was correct—that our earth was situated near its center—but the idea that the sun, moon and stars whirled around it for its particular benefit, is looked upon as a vast conceit.
We now know for a certainty that our glorious Galaxy of stars is itself but an item in space, for since the recent investigations with the 60- and the 100-inch telescopes at Mount Wilson observatory with which the outer portions of the spiral nebulæ were resolved into swarms of stars, we know that there are hundreds of thousands of Galaxies separated from ours by a million light years, and from one another equally far. Probably the smaller nebulæ are even more remote. And we used to imagine that our own Galaxy floated through an infinite void of boundless space as lorn and lonely as Wordsworth's "cloud"! Then science goes still further and wonders if all these Galaxies form a part of a starry region which extends indefinitely in all directions or whether the star producing region is limited and surrounded by empty space!
"The eagle flying in the face of the sun is as naught to the audacity of man poised on a speck in space, marshalling the heavenly host about him and calling them by name across an abyss of space that may take years, hundreds of years, thousands and possibly millions of years for light to cross."
—J. R. Collins.
Our thoughts, now half stunned, fly back across unthinkable starless intervals, back like a magnet to the phosphorescent gleam which is ours in the boundless ocean in which a universe is but a gleam. Nearer—nearer—nearer—the gleam has softened to a touch of mist, the mist has expanded to a definite shape studded with stars which are brightening, and widening apart. Now the shape has become an ethereal form, and before us rises a marvelous creation. As seen from this outer point, our Galaxy is neither a ring nor a wreath but is formed of huge spirals which reach far outward into the heavens. This cathedral of light, whose "lace-work" is of suns, covers an area so magnificent that a beam of light traveling 6,000,000,000,000 miles a year would require some 300,000 years to cross it! Around a modest, medium-sized star in the central cluster of this overwhelming and heroic structure, whirls a tiny planet named Earth, and on this Earth, the infinitesimal human being named Man, whose questioning mind thus flies from star to star.
"Round
That world of worlds His arm the Almighty wound;
The bright immensity He raised, and pressed,
All trembling, like a babe, unto His breast.
Think ye that I, who thus do ye maintain;
Thus always cherish ye, or all were vain—
Ye all would drop into your native void,
If by my hand ye were not held and buoyed.
—with God, 'tis one
To guide a sunbeam or create a sun—
To rule ten thousand thousand worlds or none.
Go, worlds! said God, but learn, ere ye depart,
My favored temple is an human heart;"
—Festus, Philip James Bailey.
THE TWO CROSSES
At the foot of the Northern Cross, the Milky Way divides into two large channels which are quite irregular along the edges. These two channels do not unite again for a distance of 150 degrees, which leads us around to the southern hemisphere. As seen from the southern hemisphere, one of these divisions is particularly bright, while the other is not only fainter but looks as if its streams of stars had encountered obstacles along their pathway and had been forced to run up little rills along its sides.