Page:Astronomy for Everybody.djvu/27

Let us enter upon our subject by taking a general view of this universe in which we live, fancying ourselves looking at it from a point without its limits. Far away, indeed, is the point we must choose. To give a conception of the distance, let us measure it by the motion of light. This agent, darting through 186,000 miles in every second, would make the circuit of the earth several times between two ticks of a watch. The standpoint which we choose will probably be well situated if we take it at a distance through which light would travel in 100,000 years. So far as we know, we should at this point find ourselves in utter darkness, a black and starless sky surrounding us on all sides. But, in one direction, we should see a large patch of feeble light spreading over a considerable part of the heavens like a faint cloud or the first glimmer of a dawn. Possibly there might be other such patches in different directions, but of these we know nothing. The one which we have mentioned, and which we call the universe, is that which we are to inspect. We therefore fly toward it—how fast we need not say. To reach it in a month we should have to go a million times as fast as light. As we approach, it continually spreads out over more of the black sky,