s
(11.85). This number multiplied by itself also equals 140. The square of
the number 11.85 is equal to the cube of the number 5.2. This very
simple law regulates all the heavenly bodies.

Thus, to find the distance of a planet, it is sufficient to observe the
time of its revolution, then to discover the square of the given number
by multiplying it into itself. The result of the operation gives
simultaneously the cube of the number that represents the distance.

To express this distance in kilometers (or miles), it is sufficient to
multiply it by 149,000,000 (in miles 93,000,000), the key to the system
of the world.

Nothing, then, could be less complicated than the definition of these
methods. A few moments of attention reveal to us in their majestic
simplicity the immutable laws that preside over the immense harmony of
the Heavens.

* * * * *

But we must not confine ourselves to our own solar province. We have yet
to speak of the stars that reign in infinite space far beyond our
radiant Sun.

Strange and audacious as it may appear, the human mind is able to cross
these heights, to rise on the wings of genius to these distant suns,
and to plumb the depths of the abyss that separates us from these
celestial kingdoms.

Here, we return to our first method, that of triangulation. And the
distance that separates us from the Sun must serve in calculating the
distances of the stars.

The Earth, spinning round the Sun at a distance of 149,000,000
kilometers (93,000,000 miles), describes a circumference, or rather an
ellipse, of 936,000,000 kilometers (580,320,000 miles), which it travels
over in a year. The distance of any point of the terrestrial orbit from
the diametrically opposite point which it passes six months later is
298,000,000 kilometers (184,760,000 miles), _i.e._, the diameter of this
orbit. This immense distance (in comparison with those with which we are
familiar) serves as the base of a triangle of which the apex is a star.

The difficulty in exact measurements of the distance of a star consists
in observing the little luminous point persistently for a whole year, to
see if this star is stationary, or if it describes a minute ellipse
reproducing in perspective the annual revolution of the Earth.

If it remains fixed, it is lost in such depths of space that it is
impossible to gage the distance, and our 298,000,000 kilometers have no
meaning in view of such an abyss.