The starry skies

So he left his home behind him, and started off to explore. He had a toilsome journey. He wandered over wide plains; he climbed steep mountains; he forded dangerous rivers; he c...

The world is a round ball; and people live on all parts of it. Therefore, a man on the opposite side from us stands with his feet turned upwards towards our feet and his head po...

First, by day. Beginning in the early morning, just before sunrise, we have perhaps a clear sky, grayish rather than blue, and towards the east a brightening glow shows that the...

True, they also rise and set, by day as well as by night. The Moon often does so: and all day long there are Stars coming up in the east, and stars crossing the sky, and stars g...

Even on Earth it is often puzzling to tell distances. If one is looking across a smooth surface, with nothing to break it, one cannot easily judge. I remember going in a sailing...

Sometimes she is quite round, like a plump laughing child-face, with eyes and nose and mouth marked in grey shadows. Sometimes a part of the round face seems to be shaven off on...

You know how the Moon looks, seen only with our own eyes--a bright round ball, some would say a bright round plate, with odd gray markings which might mean anything. This is abo...

If you look at the Sun in our sky before he sets, and then, a little later, at the Moon when she has risen, it might seem that the two are very much of the same size and very mu...

Looking upon him from our Earth, we see always a round shining body. Except when part of him is hidden because it has sunk below the horizon we never have a “half-Sun,” or a “qu...

You see now how it is that on the Earth we have day and night. The whole Earth spins round and round, and so each part of her in turn comes into sunlight.

Now for the Planets, or Worlds, which journey as our Earth journeys, round and round the Sun, each in its own particular pathway. And--to begin with--a few words as to what keep...

The Sun is in the centre, or, as a child would say, “in the middle.” The Earth journeys round him. The Moon also journeys round the Sun; and, as she goes, she curves backwards a...

Now let us take a flight through the Sun’s great kingdom, paying a visit to one bright world after another on our way. We will start from near the Sun himself, stopping first to...

Next outside the pathway of Venus comes the pathway of another planet, named EARTH--this same globe on which we live. From it, as from a little boat on the great ocean, we look...

You now know that the distance of Mercury from the Sun is about 35 millions of miles, and that the distance of Mars is about _four_ times that of Mercury. But the distance of Ju...

SATURN is only a little smaller than Jupiter, and very light indeed in weight. Not at all like our firm and solid Earth. He actually weighs _less than water_; which means that i...

A good deal has been said about empty gaps in the sky between and around the pathways of the worlds. But those gaps are at least not always quite empty.

Each one indeed gives forth its tiny light, borrowed from the Sun. But those dim gleams are far too weak to reach us here on Earth. The only time when they can be seen by us is...

First you had to think about our Earth’s pathway in the sky, and then about other pathways, nearer and farther, like vast oval hoops lying within and without the Earth’s pathway...

I wonder how many of the Stars you know by sight, so as to be able to point them out one by one, and say, “That is Sirius,” or “That is Arcturus,” or “That is Capella,” or “That...

The names of different Star-Groups are very old indeed. On a map or globe of the heavens you may see them pictured, with the figure of an animal or a man from which the name of...

There are brilliant suns and dim suns, great suns and little suns, fast suns and slow suns, in the universe of stars, just as there are brilliant worlds and dim worlds, great wo...

Now I want you to get just a tiny idea of how to _begin_ to find out for yourself a few Planets and Stars in the sky. In one way, the Planets are the easier of the two to find,...