This narrow and branched girdle, studded with a
radiant light, and here and there interrupted by dark spots, deviates only
by a few degrees from forming a perfect large circle round the concave
sphere of heaven, owing to our being near the center of the large starry
cluster, and almost on the plane of the Milky Way. If our planetary system
were far 'outside' this cluster, the Milky Way would appear to telescopic
vision as a ring, and at a still greater distance as a resolvable discoidal
nebula.
Among the many self-luminous moving suns, erroneously called 'fixed stars',
which constitute our cosmical island, our own sun is the only one known by
direct observation to be a 'central body' in its relations to spherical
agglomerations of matter directly depending upon and revolving round it,
either in the form of planets, comets, or aerolite asteroids. As far as we
have hitherto been able to investigate 'multiple' stars (double stars or
suns), these bodies are not subject, with respect to relative motion and
illumination, to the same planetary dependence that characterizes our own
solar system. Two or more self-luminous bodies, whose planets and moon, if
such exist, have hitherto escaped our telescopic powers of vision, certainly
revolve around one common center of gravity; but this is in a portion of
space which is probably occupied merely by unagglomerated matter or cosmical
vapor, while in our system
p 90
the center of gravity is often comprised within the innermost limits of a
'visible' central body.
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