It has been found, with the aid of the spectroscope, that the most
slowly moving of all stars are the extremely hot bluish Orion stars
with an average velocity of eight miles per second, while the
most rapidly moving stars are the deep-red stars with an average
velocity of twenty-one miles per second, and there is in all cases a
relationship existing between the color, or spectrum, of a star and
its velocity. The reason for this connection between the two still
remains undiscovered.
The spectroscope has also told us some astonishing facts in recent
years about the velocities of the spiral nebulæ.
It is now known that these mysterious objects are moving with the
tremendous average velocity of _four hundred and eighty miles per
second_, which exceeds the average velocity of the stars fully
twenty-five fold. They possess, moreover, internal motions of
rotation that are almost as high as their velocities through space.
It is now generally believed that spiral nebulæ are far distant
objects of enormous size and mass, exterior to our own system of
stars and similar to it in form.
In place of the universe of the "fixed stars" and the immovable sun
or earth of a few centuries ago we find that modern astronomical
discovery is substituting a universe of inconceivable grandeur and
immensity in a state of ceaseless flux and change.
Our earth--an atom spinning about on its axis and revolving rapidly
around a huge sun that is equal in volume to more than a million
earths--is carried onward with this sun through a vast universe of
suns.
Only an average-sized star among several hundred million other stars
is this huge sun of ours, moving with its planet family through the
regions of the Milky Way, where are to be found not only moving
clusters and groups of stars, speeding along their way in obedience
to the laws of motion of the system to which they belong, but also
strangely formed nebulæ covering vast stretches of space, whirling
and seething internally and shining with mysterious light, and still
other stretches of dark obscuring matter shutting off the rays of
suns beyond.
The extent and form of this enormous system of stars and nebulæ and
the laws that govern the motions of its individual members are among
the problems that the astronomers of today are attempting to solve.
On both sides of these regions of the Milky Way, wherein lies our
own solar system, lie other vast systems, such as the globular star
clusters, composed of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of
suns; the Magellanic clouds, which resemble detached portions of the
Milky Way, and, probably, the much discussed spiral nebulæ, possible
"island universes" similar to our own.
We have come far in the past three hundred years from the conception
of an immovable earth at the center of the universe to this
awe-inspiring conception of the universe that we have today, which is
based upon modern astronomical discoveries.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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