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Updated: May 22, 2025
Upon directing his telescope to nebulæ and clusters of stars, he was delighted to find that they consisted of great numbers of stars which could not be recognised by unassisted vision. He counted no fewer than forty in the cluster called the Pleiades, or Seven Stars; and he has given us drawings of this constellation, as well as of the belt and sword of Orion, and of the nebula of Præsepe.
With the slightest magnifying this object splits up into two stars, of magnitudes four and seven, situated rather more than 40" apart. Next we shall need a rather low-power eyepiece and our largest aperture in order to examine a star cluster, No. 4173, which was especially admired by Sir William Herschel, who discovered that it was not, as Messier had supposed, a circular nebula.
Sometimes it took shape in an isolated phrase complete in itself: more often it would appear as a nebula enveloping a whole work: the structure of the work, its general lines, could be perceived through a veil, torn asunder here and there by dazzling phrases which stood out from the darkness with the clarity of sculpture.
It has been found also by the successive observations of astronomers, that a star now and then is totally lost, and that a new star makes its appearance which had never been remarked before: and this they explain into the creation of a new system from time to time by the Almighty author of the universe, and the destruction of an old system worn out with age . We must also remember the power of attraction every where diffused through infinite space, by means of which, as Herschel assures us, in great length of time a nebula, or cluster of stars, may be formed, while the projectile force they received in the beginning may prevent them from all coming together, at least for millions of ages.
On one point the new planetesimal theory differs from the other theories. It supposes that, since the particles of the whirling nebula are all travelling in the same general direction, they overtake each other with less violent impact than the other theories suppose, and therefore the condensation of the material into planets would not give rise to the terrific heat which is generally assumed.
And now the star itself, showing indications of having turned into a nebula, behaved in a most erratic manner, giving rise to the suspicion that it was about to burst out again. But this did not occur, and at length it sunk into a state of lethargy from which it has to the present time not recovered.
After we have resolved many a dim nebula in the starry sky, and found it all ablaze with suns and worlds, there will still hang, faint and far before us, hazy magnificences which we have not apprehended. Confidently and boldly as we may offer our prayers, and largely as we may expect, the answer is ever more than the petition.
"I believe," Cosmo replied, "that the knowledge originated here, beneath us, and that it was afterward conveyed to the Egyptians, who embodied it in their great symbolical god." "Are we to understand," demanded Professor Jeremiah Moses, "that this figure was all that you saw on the breast of the statue, and that you simply inferred that the ring represented a nebula?" "Not at all," Cosmo replied.
The idea that the nebulosity around the new star was formed by the illumination caused by the light of the explosion spreading out on all sides therefore fails to satisfy us, not because the expansion of the nebula seemed to be so slow, but because it was many times as swift as the speed of light.
Christians accepting the theory of evolution have to believe that God allowed the sun to form out of the nebula, and the earth to form from the sun, that He allowed Man to develop slowly from the speck of protoplasm in the sea. That at some period of Man's gradual evolution from the brute, God found Man guilty of some sin, and cursed him.
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