The Sun's Journey Through Space and 

 Distance From the Earth. 



Read before the Hamilton Scientific Association, 

 February 14th, 1908, 



BY G. PARRY JENKINS, F.R.A.S. 



A French philosopher said, " when you are right you 

 are more right than you think," and nowhere is this pro- 

 found truth more forcibly illustrated than in astronomical 

 investigations. It has now been proved wn'thout doubt 

 that all the stars are endowed with proper motion. There 

 appears to be no such thing in fact as absolute rest among 

 any one of the myriad of bodies that compose the host of 

 heaven Each moves in an orbit, the path of which is 

 influenced l)y the universal power of gravitation, which we 

 find reigns supreme, not only through the solar system, 

 but to the infinitely greater stellar universe beyond. 

 Circles, ellipses, parabolas and hyperbolas, in fact every 

 one of the conic sections, all enter into the paths of some 

 of the mighty orbs around us. What complexity of motion 

 is here indicated by the side of which the most complicated 

 maciiinery of man's invention are mere playthings. When 

 Copernicus, the founder of the present system of 

 astronom}^ overthrew the older conception of the earth 

 being the centre of the solar system and placed our sun as 

 the true pivot around which the earth and all the other 

 planets revolved, he considered the sun to be stationery. 

 However, the human intellect was gradually enabled to 

 separate the real from the apparent celestial motions. Then 

 when the great truth dawned that the stars were sun.s and 

 the sun only a star, and it was found that many of them 

 were possessed of real motion, the question naturally arose 

 whether according to the law of analogy the great central 



