THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 275 



hosts into vision and photography reveals mil- 

 lions more fairly populating the vast spaces; 

 and yet of all the stars tabulated only twenty- 

 three have been actually measured because no 

 angle can be found equal to the demand, even 

 though observed from the opposite sides of the 

 earth's orbit which is itself over two hundred 

 million of miles in diameter. 



For instance, our nearest Sun neighbor, 

 Alpha Centauri, is 275,000 times as far away 

 from us as our Sun, that is, 25,000 billions of 

 miles! The next nearest Sun, 61 Cygni, is 

 49,000 billions of miles from this planet! 61 

 Cygni is a double star and they two are forty- 

 five times as far apart from each other as our 

 Earth from the Sun and yet it takes a most 

 powerful telescope to show any distance be- 

 tween these companions; this tells the story of 

 distances between celestial orbits. So far away 

 is Sirius, the brightest star in our heavens, it 

 takes 1,300 years to note any appreciable 

 change. Castor and Pollux have stood sid$ by 

 side for 4,000 years and yet flying apart at the 

 rate of sixty-eight miles per second, i. e., five 

 millions of miles daily — this motion for forty 

 centuries and still they are twins ! 



Mira, the wonderful, is a va. able star, it 

 grows rapidly bright and becomes a second 



