106 ASTRONOMYANDTHEBIBLE
in its effortstoplunge acrossthegulfbywhichwe
areseparated from thosewonderful objects."
—Gen.
O.M.Mitchel.
Itisquiteimpossibletogetanyproperideaofstar
distances. Miles are far too small as units in the
great computation necessary to express these dis-
tances. A largerunitbecomes absolutely necessary.
Astronomershave thereforeemployed thelightunit,
orlightyear. Lightseemsalmostinstantaneous;but
so farasoureyes areconcerned,itreallytakestime
totravel. Itsvelocityhasbeenmeasuredmanytimes,
by many different persons, and by a number of
thoroughlyreliablemethods;andtheresultsarequite
uniform, showingthatittravelsatarateof 186,000
miles a second, or a little over 11,000,000 miles a
minute. Thedistancethatlightwouldthustravelin
ayearisobtainedbymultiplying16,070,400,000miles,
one day's travel, by 365, or 5,865,696,000,000miles.
Thisisthelightyear;itistheunitformeasuringdis-
tancestothefixedstars. Itistotheastronomerwhat
feetaretothecarpenter,orwhatrodsaretothesur-
veyor.
Theimmensedistanceoverwhichlightcanmovein
ayearis inconceivabletous. Yettherearestars so
farremovedfromusthatittakestheirlighthundreds
ofyearstoreachus. Someofthedistancesfromus
tothesestarshaveactuallybeenmeasured.
'Tncasealuminousbodyweretobesuddenlycalled
intobeing,andlocatedinspaceatthedistanceof11,-
160,000of miles fromthe eyes ofan observerwho
wasonthelookoutforitslight, thislight wouldnot