Flowers of the Sky. Richard Anthony Proctor

      Although astronomy tells us in clearest words of the vast depths of space which surround our earth on all sides, we are not thereby enabled to realize their enormous extension. It is not merely that the unknown depths beyond the range of our most powerful telescopes are inconceivable, but that the parts of space which we can examine are on too large a scale for us to conceive their real dimensions. It is hardly going too far to say that our powers of actual conception are limited to the extent of space over which the eye seems to range in the daytime. Of course in the daytime, at least in clear weather, there is one direction in which the eyesight ranges over a distance of many millions of miles—namely, where we see the sun. But the sense of sight is not cognisant of that enormous distance, and simply presents the sun to us as a bright disc in the sky, or perhaps rather nearer to us than the sky. Even the distance of the sky itself is under-estimated. A portion of the light we receive from the sky on a clear day comes from parts of the atmosphere distant more than thirty or forty miles from us; but the eye does not recognise the fact. The blue sky seems a little farther off than the clouds, but not much; the light clouds of summer seem a little but not much farther off than the heavier clouds of a winter sky; a cloud-covered winter sky seems a little farther off than heavy rain-clouds. The actual varieties of distance among clouds of various kinds are not much more clearly discerned than the actual varieties of distance among the heavenly bodies. The estimate formed of the distance of a cloud-covered sky overhead probably amounts to little more than a mile, and it is very doubtful whether the mind presents the remotest depths of a blue sky overhead at more than two miles. Towards the horizon the distance seems greater, and probably on a cloudy day the sky near the horizon is unconsciously regarded as at a distance of about five miles, while blue sky near the horizon may be regarded as lying at a distance of six or seven miles, the arch of a blue sky seeming to be far more deeply curved than that of a cloud-covered sky.

      It is to distances such as these that the mind unconsciously refers the celestial bodies. We know that the moon is about 2,000 miles in diameter, but the mind refuses to present her to us as other than a round disc much smaller than those other objects in sight which occupy a much larger portion of the field of vision. The sun cannot be conceived to exceed the moon enormously in size, seeing that he appears no larger; and all the multitude of stars are judged by the sight to be mere bright points of light in reality as they appear to be.

      How, then, can we hope to appreciate the vastness of space whereof astronomy tells us? To the student of science attempting to conceive the immensities of whose existence he is assured, the same lesson might be taught in parable which the child of St. Augustine's vision taught the Numidian theologian. As reasonably might an infant hope to pour the waters of ocean into a hollow, scooped with his tiny fingers in the sand, as man to picture in his narrow mind the length and breadth and depth of the abysses of space in which our earth is lost.

      Yet, as a picture of a great mansion may be so drawn on a small scrap of paper as to convey just ideas of its proportions, so may the great truths which astronomy has taught us about the depths of space be so presented that just conceptions may be formed of the proportions of at least those parts of the universe which lie within the range of scientific vision, though it would be hopeless to attempt to conceive their real dimensions.

      Thus, when we learn that a globe as large as our earth, suspended beside the moon, would seem to have a diameter exceeding hers nearly four times, so that the globe would cover a space in the heavens about thirteen times as large as the moon covers, we form a just conception of the size of the moon as compared with the earth, though the mind cannot conceive such a body as the moon or the earth really is. When, in turn, we are told that if a globe as large as the earth, but glowing as brightly as the sun, were set beside the sun, it would look a mere point of light, we not only learn to picture rightly to ourselves how largely the sun exceeds the earth, but also how enormous must be the real distance of the sun.

      Another step leads us to a standpoint whence we can form a correct estimate of the vast distance of the fixed stars; for we learn that so enormous is the distance of even the nearest fixed star, that the tremendous space separating the earth from that star sinks in turn into the merest point, insomuch that if a globe as bright as the sun had the earth's orbit as a close fitting girdle, then this glorious orb (with a diameter of some 184,000,000 of miles) would look very much smaller than such a globe as our earth would look at the sun's distance—would, in fact, occupy but about one-fortieth part of the space in the sky which she, though she would then look a mere point, would occupy if viewed from that distance.

      But there is a way of viewing the immensities of space which, though not aiding us indeed to conceive them, enables the mind to picture their proportions better than any other. The dimensions of the earth's path around the sun sink into insignificance beside those of the outermost planets; but these in their turn dwindle into nothingness beside those of some among the comets. From the paths of these comets, if only sentient and reasoning beings could trace out in a comet's company those mighty orbits, and could have for the duration of their existence not the brief span of time which measures the longest human life, but many circuits of their comet home around the same ruling orb (as we live during many circuits of our globe around the sun), the dimensions of the star-depths, which even to scientific insight are all but immeasurable, would be directly discernible. Not only would the proportions of that mighty system be perceived, whose fruits and blossoms are suns and worlds, but even the gradually changing arrangement of its parts could be discerned.

      Some comets, indeed, as I pointed out in an essay on comets several months ago (see Expanse of Heaven, p. 149), do not travel around the sun, but flit from sun to sun on journeys lasting millions of years, paying each sun but a single visit. A being inhabiting such a comet, and having these interstellar journeys as the years of his existence, so that he could live through many of them, would have a wonderful insight into the economy of the stellar system. If his powers of conception as far exceeded ours as the range of his travels and the duration of his existence, he would be able to recognise the proportions of a large part of the stellar universe as clearly as we recognise the proportions of the solar system.

      But leaving these wonderful wanderers, whose journeys are as far beyond our powers of conception as the immensity of the regions of star-strewn space, we may find, among the comets belonging to the sun's domain, bodies whose range of travel would give their inhabitants far clearer views of the architecture of the heavens than even the profoundest terrestrial astronomer can possibly obtain.

      Such a comet as Halley's (fig. 3) for instance, though one of comparatively limited range in space, yet travels so far from the sun that, from the extreme part of its path, it sees the stars displaced nearly twenty times as much (owing to its own change of position) as they are from the earth on opposite sides of her comparatively narrow orbit. And the length of this comet's year, if it indicated the length of the lives of all creatures travelling along with it, would suggest a power of patiently watching the progress of changes lasting not a few of our years only, but for centuries. Seventy-five or seventy-six years elapse between