The Common Sights in the Heavens - 1862 Author:Alfred Wilks Drayson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: nearer to the earth than about four hundred million miles. Jupiter. The Earth. The receptability of light of this planet must be very great, for he appears... more » nearly, if not quite, as bright to us as does Venus; yet the one throws his reflected light four hundred million miles and the other only about sixty million, and Jupiter is more than seven times as far from the sun as is Venus. Jupiter may be seen at any time of night, in consequence of his orbit, or course, being outside that of the earth. From his large size and great brilliancy he is not likely to be mistaken for any other planet or star, unless it be the Dog-Star, called also Sirius; but as the position of Sirius will be pointed out at a future page, even this mistake ought not to occur. However much we may be accustomed to deal with figures, we still fail to realize the great distances of the celestial bodies, and hence the vastness of the universe, unless we are more forcibly reminded of these distances by some comparison with terrestrial objects. Thus we may better comprehend the distance of Jupiter from the earth, when we find that if an express train, travelling continually, started from the earth towards Jupiter when he was at the shortest distance from us, it would occupy more than nine hundred years to reach him, although it travelled at the rate of fifty miles an hour. Jupiter will always be visible during nearlynine months in the year, the period when he is invisible is when he is behind the sun. When first observed as a morning star he is not very brilliant, nor does he appear so large as he will when he is a midnight star. If when Jupiter is first observed as a morning star, we notice the stars which appear to be close to him, we shall find that each morning he will when he rises be a little m...« less