But this distance is as nothing when we come to deal with the distances
of the other stars from our Sun.

The distance from our Sun to the nearest fixed (?) star is more than
20 millions of millions of miles. Our express train, which crosses the
diameter of the solar system in 10,560 years, would take, if it went 60
miles an hour day and night, about 40 million years to reach the nearest
fixed star from the Sun.

And if we had to mark the nearest fixed star on our chart made on a
scale of 1 inch to the million miles, we should find that whereas
a sheet of 465 feet would take in the outermost planet of the solar
system, a sheet to take in the nearest fixed star would have to be about
620 miles wide. On this sheet, as wide as from London to Inverness, the
Sun would be represented by a dot three-quarters of an inch in diameter,
and the Earth by a pin-prick.

But these immense distances only relate to the _nearest_ stars. Now, the
nearest stars are about four "light years" distant from us. That is to
say, that light, travelling at a rate of about 182,000 miles in _one
second_, takes four years to come from the nearest fixed star to the
Earth.

But I have seen the distance from the Earth to the Great Nebula in Orion
given as _a thousand light years_, or 250 times the distance of the
fixed star above alluded to.

To reach that nebula at 60 miles an hour, an express train would have to
travel for 35 millions of years multiplied by 250--that is to say, for
8,750 million years.

And yet there are millions of stars whose distances are even greater
than the distance of the Great Nebula in Orion.

How many stars are there? No one can even guess. But L. Struve estimates
the number of those visible to the great telescopes at 20 millions.

Twenty millions of suns. And as for the size of these suns, Sir Robert
Ball says Sirius is ten times as large as our Sun; and a well-known
astronomer, writing in the _English Mechanic_ about a week ago, remarks
that Alpha Orionis (Betelgeuze) has probably 700 times the light of our
Sun.

Looking through my telescope, which is only 3-inch aperture, I have seen
star clusters of wonderful beauty in the Pleiades and in Cancer. There
is, in the latter constellation, a dim star which, when viewed through
my glass, becomes a constellation larger, more brilliant, and more
beautiful than Orion or the Great Bear. I have looked at these jewelled
sun-clusters many a time, and wondered over them. But