306 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



heavier that everything on its surface would weigh 27/^ times as 

 much as on our earth. A man weighing 150 pounds here would 

 weigh two tons there. 



If we could only be near enough to see the wonderful fireworks 

 on the surface of the sun we would witness something grand beyond 

 all description. There are constant explosions of gases, brilliant 

 red in color due to the hydrogen gas which is red hot ; these explo- 

 sions are usually about 50,000 miles high but sometimes they shoot 

 up 300,000 miles, at a rate of from, three hundred to five hundred 

 miles per second. Some fireworks, that ! 



The most interesting thing about the sun, after all, is that with 

 all its heat and light and fireworks it is simply a star, and not a very 

 large one at that. When we look up into the skies on a clear night, 

 every star we see twinkling there is a great sun and may have 

 worlds like our own revolving around it. We could not see these 

 worlds because the stars are so far away that our world could not 

 be seen through the largest telescope on the star that is our nearest 

 neighbor in the skies. 



The sun has been worshipped by many people in ancient times. 

 The Egyptians built temples in honor of the sun which faced either 

 the sunrise or sunset. The Grecian temples were placed with refer- 

 ence to the sun as were the great cathedrals built in the Middle 

 Ages. The Vedas of the Hindus were hymns to the sun: and the 

 Incas of Peru built temples to the sun. Although in the olden days 

 men knew but little about the constitution of the sun, yet they 

 realized that they and all of the world around them were in some- 

 way dependent upon it, and they showed their gratitude by wor- 

 ship. 



Our Own Sun's Family 



Some people think that they are the only ones of importance in 

 this world, and some people think that ours is the only world 

 of importance in the Universe, and some of the rest of us think 

 that both are mistaken. In any case, we know that our world is 

 only one of eight which belong to our own sun, the other seven 

 belonging just as securely and regularly as does ours. In many 

 ways these other seven worlds are like ours; they move around the 

 sun, each in its own path, and the paths or orbits are all in nearly 

 the same plane. That is to say, if you were big enough you could 

 step across from the orbit of Mercury to the orbit of Venus, then 



