What a space they must take up in reality!
Especially if, as astronomers believe, the clusters of stars and patches of nebulous matter in the two clouds there are as far off from each other as from this earth.
What is known about the Coal-Sacks?
The larger Coal-Sack, or black empty space not far from the two clouds, is of a pear shape, and occupies a space of eight degrees long by five broad. Its darkness is only comparative, as two hundred stars have been noticed therein by a good telescope.
Are the Nebulæ of the Clouds peculiar?
One in the centre is very large, and has an odd dark space in its middle. It is also surrounded by a circle of ten other Nebulæ.
Like bright guards around a king.
Another consists of four starry centres, or nuclei, which are curiously united by a very faint nebulous matter.
Do, father, tell me more of these Nebulæ.
Then I will talk about some singular filaments, or threads of light, seen around the nebulæ, which have much puzzled astronomers. Those filaments about the Nebulæ of Orion and Argo are wonderfully strange.