CHAPTER TWO 



THE UNIVERSE AND SOLAR SYSTEM 



LYING with your back upon the earth and looking up 

 into the blue sky, did you ever wonder what there might 

 be far away in space ? Is there a wall that bounds it all ? 

 If there is, what is beyond that wall? If not, how far 

 does space extend? Are there other suns, larger, 

 hotter, and more brilliant than our own? Are there 

 great heavenly bodies, thousands of times as large as 

 the earth, which no one on the earth has ever seen? 

 Far out in space are there other worlds like ours on which 

 beings like ourselves could live? 



The earth, with everything on it, and all the heavenly 

 bodies, seen and unseen, make up the universe. In 

 every direction it stretches away through limitless space, 

 a vast collection of giant bodies that the imagination 

 can hardly picture. When we stand forth under the 

 sky at night and think of 



Clusters and beds of worlds and beelike swarms 

 Of stars and starry streams, 



sweeping on and on through space, we are awed by the 

 majesty of the spectacle before our eyes. 



The stars. What are the twinkling points of light 

 which our eyes behold in whatever direction we look on 

 a clear night ? They are great blazing suns, set here and 

 there at vast distances through space. We do not see 

 that they are farther from us than the clouds, except 

 when a drifting cloud hides them from our view. Yet 

 the clouds are only a short distance from us, floating in 

 the air above us, while the stars are out in space so far 

 away that even were we able to fly with the swiftness of 



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