increasing in size with the velocity of light.

The first sentiment the reader will feel on this subject is doubtless
one of surprise that the distance of the star should be so great as
this explanation would imply. Six months after the explosion, the globe
of light, as actually photographed, was of a size which would have been
visible to the naked eye only as a very minute object in the sky. Is it
possible that this minute object could have been thousands of times the
dimensions of our solar system?

To see how the question stands from this point of view, we must have
some idea of the possible distance of the new star. To gain this idea,
we must find some way of estimating distances in the universe. For a
reason which will soon be apparent, we begin with the greatest
structure which nature offers to the view of man. We all know that the
Milky Way is formed of countless stars, too minute to be individually
visible to the naked eye. The more powerful the telescope through which
we sweep the heavens, the greater the number of the stars that can be
seen in it. With the powerful instruments which are now in use for
photographing the sky, the number of stars brought to light must rise
into the hundreds of millions, and the greater part of these belong to
the Milky Way. The smaller the stars we count, the greater their
comparative number in the region of the Milky Way. Of the stars visible
through the telescope, more than one-half are found in the Milky Way,
which may be regarded as a girdle spanning the entire visible universe.

Of the diameter of this girdle we can say, almost with certainty, that
it must be more than a thousand times as great as the distance of the
nearest fixed star from us, and is probably two or three times greater.
According to the best judgment we can form, our solar system is situate
near the central region of the girdle, so that the latter must be
distant from us by half its diameter. It follows that if we can imagine
a gigantic pair of compasses, of which the points extend from us to
Alpha Centauri, the nearest star, we should have to measure out at
least five hundred spaces with the compass, and perhaps even one
thousand or more, to reach the region of the Milky Way.

With this we have to connect another curious fact. Of eighteen new
stars which have been observed to blaze forth during the last four
hundred years, all are in the region of the Milky Way. This seems to
show that, as a rule, they