Читать книгу Star-land: Being Talks With Young People About the Wonders of the Heavens онлайн

36 страница из 55

Great as are these prominences, others have been recorded which are even larger. One of them has been seen to rush up with a speed of 200,000 miles an hour—that is, with more than two hundred times the pace of the swiftest of rifle-bullets.

NIGHT AND DAY.

ssss1

The sun is bright, and the earth is dark. The sun gives light and heat, and the earth receives light and heat. We should be in utter darkness were it not for the sun; at least, all the light we should have, beyond our trivial artificial light, would come from the feeble twinkle of the stars. The moon would be no use, for the brightness of the moon is merely the reflection of the sunbeams. Were the sun’s light completely extinguished we could never again see the moon, and we should also miss from the sky a few other bodies, which we call planets, such as Jupiter and Venus, Mars and Saturn. But the stars would be the same as before, for they do not depend upon the sun for their light. We shall, indeed, afterwards see that each star is itself a sun.

Правообладателям