The Magellanic Clouds, which are almost as famous as the Southern Cross, lie to one side of the Milky Way, as seen by persons south of the equator, but they have no apparent connection with our Galaxy of stars. The "clouds" resemble the Milky Way and are easily discernible with the unaided eye, the larger one being 200 times the apparent size of the moon--about as large as the bowl of the Big Dipper--and the smaller one-fourth as large. Photographs reveal the large Magellanic Cloud as being composed of nebulæ, individual stars and star clusters, the stars ranging from the fifth to the fifteenth magnitude. Flammarion counted 291 distinct nebulæ, 46 clusters and 582 stars. Herschel counted several hundred nebulæ and clusters "which far exceeds anything that is to be met with in any other region of the heavens." Dr. Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard Observatory, found the linear diameter of the cloud to be 15,000 light years, and that it lay at such an immense distance that it required 110,000 years for its light to reach us. This cloud is like a small universe in itself, although many of its stars are anything but small for Dr. Shapley found that hundreds of them exceed the brightness of the sun by 10,000 times. The large Magellanic Cloud lies between the southern pole and Canopus; the smaller one between Beta Centauri and the pole. These starry clouds, which look so much like real clouds, were named after the celebrated navigator, Magellan. CHAPTER XI OUR NEAREST STAR--THE SUN STARS are suns which lie at such vast distances that they seem no more than twinkling points of light. Through the aid of the spectroscope we have learned a great deal about these stars but so distant do they lie that no telescope on earth can bring them close enough for us to see the outline of a face. There is one star, however, that lies so near that when it is in the sky its light blots out that of all the other stars. This sun, which classic poets call our "day star," lies only 93,000,000 miles away; the next nearest star is over 200,000 times as far. This distance of 93,000,000 miles is close enough to enable us to examine the face of such a star as ours with comparative ease, indeed, it is close enough to enable us to feel the warmth of the fierce fires which rage upon its surface. It is not at all a difficult matter to realize the distance from our earth to the sun. A train traveling 60 miles an hour would reach the sun in 176 years; an airplane flying at the rate of 200 miles an hour would reach it in 50 years. Thus the distance seems to shrink as we adjust our rate of speed. A ray of light crosses the same space in about 8 minutes. The existence of all life upon the earth is absolutely dependent upon the sun. "It is perceived that the sun of the world, with all its essence, which is heat and light, flows into every tree, and every shrub and flower, and into every stone, mean as well as precious." --_Swedenborg._