The Astronomy of the Bible

an observer, watching the heavens at any particular time and place, not more than some two thousand stars are separately visible to the unassisted s

lky Way, and it may be easily discerned that its texture is made up of innumerable minute points of light, a granulation, of which some of the grains are set more closely together, forming the more brilliant patches, and some more loosely, giving the darker shades. The mind easily conceives that the m

ars, if thou be able to number them: and

consequently contained only naked-eye stars. Since astronomers have been able to sound the heavens more deeply, catalogues have increased in size and number. Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, made one of 3,310 stars; from the observations of Bradley, the third, a yet more famous catalogue has been compiled. In our own day more than three hundred thousand stars

ese men had but small powers of numeration. To us,-who can count beyond that which we can conceive,-as to the Psalmist, it is

nce of the starry sky. Nowhere, however, have we any indication whether or not they considered the stars were all set on this curtain, that is to say were all at the same distance from us. We now know that they are not equidistant from us, but this we largely base on the fact that the stars ar

y of the moon, and another glory of the stars: f

echnical term. The average star of any particular magnitude gives about two and a half times as much light as the average star of the ne

elling from them to us. Now it takes light only one second to traverse 186,300 miles, and yet it requires four and a third years for the light from the nearest star to reach us. This is a star of the first magnitude, Alpha in the constellation of the Centaur. The next nearest star is a faint one of between the seventh and eighth magnitudes, and its light takes seven years to come. From a sixth magni

there are 31,556,925 seconds in a year. Light then could girdle the earth a thousand million times whilst it comes from Alpha Centauri. Or we may put it another way. The distance from

is concerned, for us, as for the Hebrews, they might all actually lie

ffort of ours can reach, be our telescopes ever so great and powerful, our measuring instruments ever so precise and delicate. For them, as f

the Naamat

out the Almight

s heaven; what

manite reiterated

in the heigh

ght of the stars,

of heaven as a measure of the greatness of his

ndations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off a

ht was that of the heavens, whose arms stretched from east

aven is high a

mercy toward the

e east is fr

moved our transgr

T COMET

hrough the constellati