If we take up the
physical description of the universe from the remotest nebulae, we may be
inclined to compare it with the mythical portions of history. The one
begins in the obscurity of antiquity, the other in that of inaccessible
space; and at the point where reality seems to flee before us, imagination
becomes doubly incited to draw from its own fullness, and give definite
outline and permanence to the changing forms of objects.
If we compare the regions of the universe with one of the island-studded
seas of our own planet, we may imagine matter to be distributed in groups,
either as unresolvable nebulae of different ages, condensed around one or
more nuclei, or as already agglomerated into clusters of stars, or isolated
spheroidal bodies. The cluster of stars, to which our cosmical island
belongs, forms a lens-shaped, flattened stratum, detached on every side,
whose major axis is estimated at seven or eight hundred, and its minor one
at a hundred and fifty times the distance of Sirius. It would appear, on
the supposition that the parallax of Sirius is not greater than that
accurately determined for the brightest star in the Centaur (0".9128), that
light traverses one distance of Sirius in three years, while it also
follows, from Bessel's earlier excellent Memoir* on the parallax of the
remarkable star 61 Cygni (0".
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