The Story of the Sun, Moon, and Stars

CHAPTER I.. The Earth One of a Family.

THE EARTH ONE OF A FAMILY.

What is this earth of ours?

Something very great--and yet something very little. Something very great, compared with the things upon the earth; something very little, compared with the things outside the earth.

And as our journeyings together are for a while to be away from earth, we shall find ourselves obliged to count her as something quite small in the great universe, where so many larger and mightier things are to be found,--if indeed they are mightier. Not that we have to say good-bye altogether to our old home. We must linger about her for a while before starting, and afterwards it will be often needful to come back, with speed swifter than the flight of light, that we may compare notes on the sizes and conditions of other places visited by us.

But first of all: what is this earth of ours?

It was rather a pleasant notion which men held in olden days, that we--that great and important “We” which loves to perch itself upon a height--stood firm and fixed at the very center of everything. The earth was supposed to be a vast flat plain, reaching nobody could tell how far. The sun rose and set for us alone; and the thousands of stars twinkled in the sky at night for nobody’s good except ours; and the blue sky overhead was a crystal covering for the men of our earth, and nothing more. In fact, people seem to have counted themselves not merely to have had a kind of kingship over the lower animals of our earth, but to have been kings over the whole universe. Sun, stars, and sky, as well as earth, were made for man, and for man only.

This was the common belief, though even in those olden days there were some who knew better. But the world in general knows better now.

Earth the center of the universe! Why, she is not that of even the particular family in the heavens to which she belongs. For we do not stand alone. The earth is one of a family of worlds, and that family is called THE SOLAR SYSTEM. And so far is our earth from being the head of the family, that she is not even one of the more important members. She is merely one of the little sisters, as it were.

Men not only believed the earth, in past days, to be at the center of the universe; but also they believed her to remain there without change. Sun, moon, stars, planets, sky, might move; but never the earth. The solid ground beneath their feet, that at least was firm. Every day the sun rose and set, and every night the stars, in like manner, rose and set. But this was easily explained. We on our great earth stood firm and still, while sun, moon, stars, went circling round us once in every twenty-four hours, just for our sole and particular convenience. What an important personage man must have felt himself then in God’s great universe! Once again, we know better now!

For it is the earth that moves, and not the sun; it is the earth that moves, and not the stars. The daily movements of sun and stars, rising in the east, traveling over the sky, and setting in the west, are no more real movements on their part than, when we travel in a rail way-train, the seeming rush of hedges, telegraph posts, houses, and fields is real. They are fixed and we are moving; yet the movement appears to us to be not ours but theirs.

Still more strongly would this appear to be the case if there were no noise, no shaking, no jarring and trembling, to make us feel that we are not at rest. Sometimes when a train begins to move gently out of a station, from among other trains, it is at the first moment quite impossible to say whether the movement belongs to the train in which we are seated or to a neighboring train. And in the motions of our earth there is no noise, no shaking, no jarring--all are rapid, silent, and even.

If you were rising through the air in a balloon, you would at first only know your own movement by seeing the earth seem to drop away from beneath you. And just so we can only know the earth’s movements by seeing how worlds around us seem to move in consequence.

When I speak of the Universe, I mean the whole of God’s mighty creation as far as the stars reach. Sometimes the word is used in this sense, and sometimes it is used only for a particular part of creation nearer to us than other parts. At present, however, we will put aside all thought of the second narrower meaning.

The wisest astronomer living can not tell us how far the stars reach. We know now that there is no firm crystal covering over our heads, dotted with bright points here and there; but only the wide open sky or heaven, containing millions of stars, some nearer, some farther, some bright enough to be seen by us all, some only visible through a telescope.

People talk often of the stars being “set in space;” and the meaning of “space” is simply “room.” Where you are must be space, or you could not be there. But it is when we get away from earth, and travel in thought through the wide fields of space, where God has placed his stars, that we begin to feel how vast it is, and what specks we are ourselves--nay, what a speck our very earth is, in this great and boundless creation.

For there is no getting to the borders of space. As one telescope after another is made, each one stronger in power and able to reach farther than the last, still more and more stars are seen, and yet more and more behind and beyond, in countless millions.

It is the same all round the earth. The old notion about our world being a flat plain has been long since given up. We know her now to be a round globe, not fixed, but floating like the stars in space.

When you look up into the sky, you are looking exactly in the opposite direction from where you would be looking up if you were in Australia. For Australia’s “up” is our “down,” and our “down” is Australia’s “up.” Or, to put it more truly, “up” is always in the direction straight away from this earth, on whatever part of it you may be standing; and “down” is always towards the center of the earth.

All round the globe, in north, south, east, west, whether you are in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America, though you will see different stars in certain different quarters of the earth, still overhead you will find shining countless points of light.

And now, what are these stars? This is a matter on which people are often confused, and on which it is well to be quite clear before going one step farther.

Some of the stars you have most likely often noticed. The seven chief stars of the Great Bear are known to a large number of people; and there are few who have not admired the splendid constellation of Orion. Perhaps you also know the W-shape of Cassiopeia, and the brilliant shining of Sirius, and the soft glimmer of the Pleiades.

The different constellations or groups of principal stars have been watched by men for long ages past. They are called the fixed stars, for they do not change. How many thousands of years ago they were first arranged by men into these groups, and who first gave them their names, we can not tell.

True, night by night, through century after century, they rise, and cross the sky, and set. But those are only seeming movements. Precisely as the turning round of the earth upon her axis, once in every twenty-four hours, makes the sun appear to rise and cross the sky and set, in the day-time; so also the same turning of the earth makes the stars appear to do the same in the night-time.

There is another seeming movement among the stars, which is only in seeming. Some come into view in summer which can not be seen in winter; and some come into view in winter which can not be seen in summer. For the sun, moving on his pathway through the sky, hides those stars which shine with him in the day-time. The zodiac is an imaginary belt in the heavens, sixteen or eighteen degrees wide, containing the twelve constellations through which the sun passes. And as he passes from point to point of his pathway, he constantly conceals from us fresh groups of stars by day, and allows fresh groups to appear by night. Speaking generally, however, the stars remain the same year after year, century after century. The groups may still be seen as of old, fixed and unchanging.

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