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The distances of several of the brightest of the fixed stars have
been estimated. Amongst others, Vega in the constellation Lyra
is 100 millions of millions of miles away; Sirius in Canis Major,
123 millions of millions; the Pole-star, 282 millions of millions;
and Capella, 340 millions of millions of miles, a figure represented
by no less than fifteen digits.
The hard numerical statement of these enormous figures, however,
fails altogether in any adequate way to convey a due impression
of the magnitude of these distances. Astronomers, in their ingenuity,
have endeavored to use some other basis, and have found "the
velocity of light" to be convenient for their purpose.
They have made their representations something in this way:
"Suppose," they say, "an observer endowed with an infinite length of vision:
suppose him stationed on the surface of Capella; looking thence
towards the earth, he would be a spectator of events that had happened
seventy years previously; transport him to a star ten times distant,
and he will be reviewing the terrestrial sphere of 720 years back;
carry him away further still, to a star so remote that it requires
something less than nineteen centuries for light to reach it,
and he would be a witness of the birth and death of Christ;
convey him further again, and he shall be looking upon the dread
desolation of the Deluge; take him away further yet (for space is
infinite), and he shall be a spectator of the Creation of the spheres.
History is thus stereotyped in space; nothing once accomplished can
ever be effaced."
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