If our knowledge of the relative distances of the stars were more complete, it would be an interesting exercise in celestial geometry to project the constellations probably visible to the inhabitants of worlds revolving around some of the other suns of space. Our sun is too insignificant for us to think that he can make a conspicuous appearance among them, except, perhaps, in a few cases. As seen, for instance, from the nearest known star, Alpha Centauri, the sun would appear of the average first magnitude, and consequently from that standpoint he might be the gem of some little constellation which had no Sirius, or Arcturus, or Vega to eclipse him with its superior splendor. But from the distance of the vast majority of the stars the sun would probably be invisible to the naked eye, and as seen from nearer systems could only rank as a fifth or sixth magnitude star, unnoticed and unknown except by the star-charting astronomer. V Conflagrations in the Heavens Suppose it were possible for the world to take fire and burn up—as some pessimists think that it will do when the Divine wrath shall have sufficiently accumulated against it—nobody out of our own little corner of space would ever be aware of the catastrophe! With all their telescopes, the astronomers living in the golden light of Arcturus or the diamond blaze of Canopus would be unable to detect the least glimmer of the conflagration that had destroyed the seat of Adam and his descendents, just as now they are totally ignorant of its existence. But at least fifteen times in the course of recorded history men looking out from the earth have beheld in the remote depths of space great outbursts of fiery light, some of them more splendidly luminous than anything else in the firmament except the sun! If _they_ were conflagrations, how many million worlds like ours were required to feed their blaze? It is probable that “temporary” or “new” stars, as these wonderful apparitions are called, really are conflagrations; not in the sense of a bonfire or a burning house or city, but in that of a sudden eruption of inconceivable heat and light, such as would result from the stripping off the shell of an encrusted sun or the crashing together of two mighty orbs flying through space with a hundred times the velocity of the swiftest cannon-shot.