How can it be among those stars when you say they are so much farther
off?
By saying it is in such a constellation, I mean that it is in a line
between us and that cluster of stars.
Why, then, the sun appears to go a journey between the stars and us for
a whole year. Then it will rise in the Ram twelve months after it had
been seen opposite that constellation. I wonder how this can be. Did
you not say, father, that neither the stars nor the sun really moved?
I did.
Well, then, it must be either the stars turning about the sun, or the
sun taking an annual trip about them, and yet the stars do not move,
and the sun does not.
Let us leave the sun and his trip for a little, while we have another
talk about the stars.
Notice that red star just rising there on the larboard side.
I have it, father.
As I want you to remember it, take my pocket-book and mark off with the
pencil a picture of the star and its four neighbours, putting a cross
under the one that has just risen.
There it is,--the under one of this cluster I have sketched. I shall
know him again.
Now, then, you must go below, and resume your observations to-morrow. I
took the exact time--seven p.m.--when you saw the star rise. You must
look for it at seven to-morrow evening.”
At four minutes before seven the next night, up rose the pretty object,
and stole a glance at the boy across the ocean.
“Father, father! it’s up, it’s up!” sang out the happy lad.
His father looked at his watch, and said--
“Your star did not come to his time. It was four minutes to seven
o’clock when he appeared, and that is four minutes too soon.
How is that, father? I must ask you, for it is of no use asking the
star.
Perhaps you will still wonder when I tell you that to-morrow evening it
will be eight minutes to seven before it gets up at this place.
Why, this is like the sun among the stars--always getting out of his
place. But the sun gets right after a year.
Do you think our star will ever get right--so as to rise at seven some
other evening?
I do not know, father.
If it rise four minutes earlier every day when will it be an hour
earlier?
In half-a-month; and twenty-four hours earlier in twelve months. But
that is the time when it will be visiting at night again.
So you have ascertained that the stars go an apparent journey round the
earth in a year; like as the sun takes a year to go his apparent course
among the stars.
Then both must have the same cause. As I found the daily motion of the
stars was owing to the real daily motion of the earth, I suppose this
yearly motion of the stars must be caused by some yearly motion of the
earth.
Either the sun turns round the earth once a year, or the earth does
round the sun.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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