EVOLUTION OF THE STARS 217 



may be vastly greater than we have described it; but this consideration 

 would not act to increase the radius of the actual stellar system in the 

 direction of the poles of the galaxy by any appreciable amount. 



Investigations conducted principally at the Harvard and Greenwich 

 Observatories indicate that the number of stars visible in our largest 

 telescopes is of the order of (30,000,000 or 70,000,000, and that the 

 number which can be recorded on photographic plates by means of 

 long exposures with our largest reflecting telescopes is several times 

 as great. 



Investigations by Newcomb and Kelvin upon the gravitational 

 power of the stellar universe to produce the observed velocities of the 

 stars give indications that the visible stars contain in reality only a 

 fraction, perhaps one fifth, of the gravitating materials concerned, and 

 they conclude that more material exists in dark and invisible stars than 

 in the visible ones. I am inclined to regard their estimates of dark 

 material as of questionable accuracy, on account of the purely arbitrary 

 assumptions involved. 



Stellar Motions 



It is necessary that we consider briefly the motions of the stars, in- 

 cluding that of our own star. It has been found that all celestial 

 bodies., as far as they have been studied, are in motion with reference to 

 the entire system, and with reference to each other. Our Sun is no 

 exception to the rule: it is traveling rapidly through the stellar system, 

 carrying its planets and their satellites along with it. The apparent 

 motions of the individual stars are not in general their real motions: 

 they are a compound of the real motions and of our motion. If the 

 other stars were really at rest in the great system, they would still 

 seem to be moving because our star is carrying us past them, so to speak : 

 the nearer stars would seem to be moving rapidly, and the more distant 

 stars less rapidly, away from that point in the sky which we are ap- 

 proaching. Since the stars are really moving in a great variety of di- 

 rections, with a great variety of speeds, their apparent motions are also 

 in a great variety of directions, but the prevailing tendency of their 

 motions is away from our goal. " 



By studying these compounded motions, Herschel, in 1783, and a 

 long line of distinguished investigators following Herschel, have estab- 

 lished that our solar system is traveling toward a point in distant 

 space about on the boundary line between the constellations Hercules 

 and Lyra. If the solar system is moving rapidly toward that point, 

 the stars in that vicinity should, on the average, seem to be approaching 

 us, and the stars in the opposite region of the sky should, on the aver- 

 age, seem to be receding from us. The spectrograph enables us to 

 measure the rates of approach and recession of the individual stars. It 

 has been found that while the hundreds of bright stars in the Hercules- 

 Lyra region are traveling, some away from us and some toward us, with 



