d with it was not
solved until Galileo directed his newly invented telescope to this
lucent object, when, to his intense delight, he discovered that it
consists of myriads of stars--millions upon millions of suns so distant
as to be individually indistinguishable to ordinary vision, and so
closely aggregated, that their blended light gives rise to the milky
luminosity signified by its name. This stelliferous zone almost
completely encircles the sphere, which it divides into two nearly equal
parts, and is inclined at an angle of 63 deg. to the celestial equator. In
Centaurus it divides into two portions, one indistinct and of
interrupted continuity, the other bright and well defined; these, after
remaining apart for 120 deg., reunite in Cygnus. The Milky Way is of
irregular outline and varies in breadth from 5 deg. to 16 deg.; it intersects
the equinoctial in the constellations Monoceros and Aquila, and
approaches in Cassiopeia to within 27 deg. of the north pole of the heavens;
an equal distance intervenes between it and the south pole. Its poles
are in Coma Bernices and Cetus. The stars in the galactic tract are very
unevenly distributed; in some of its richest regions as many stars as
are visible to the naked eye on a clear night have been counted within
the space of a square degree. In other parts they are much less
numerous, and there have been observed besides, adjacent to the most
luminous portions of the zone, dark intervals and winding channels
almost entirely devoid of stars. An instance of this kind occurs in the
constellation of the Southern Cross, where there exists in a rich
stellar region a large oval-shaped dark vacuity, 8 deg. by 5 deg. in extent,
that appears to be almost entirely denuded of stars. In looking at it,
an impression is created that one is gazing into an empty void of space
far beyond the Milky Way. This gulf of Cimmerian darkness was called by
early navigators the Coal Sack. Similar dark spaces, though not of such
magnitude, are seen in Ophiuchus, Scorpio, and Cygnus.

The Galaxy, when viewed with a powerful telescope, is found to consist
of congeries of stars, vast stellar aggregations, great luminous tracts
resolvable into clouds of stars of overpowering magnificence, superb
clusters of various orders, and convoluted nebulous streams wandering
'with mazy error' among 'islands of light and lakes of darkness,'
resolved by the telescope into banks of shining worlds. The concourses
of stars