Natural Science Passage 2 – Outschool

When frequent looking at the nightly sky has somewhat familiarized the evening constellations, different at the same hour at the various seasons of the year, one may notice three or four very bright stars which do not twinkle. A few evenings’ watching will show that they are slowly changing their positions relatively to other and fainter stars about them. These are the planets (`wanderers’), and will at first be thought and called stars; but although speaking in the most general terms, it is proper to refer to them as stars, they are worlds, among which the earth is one, traveling round the sun in nearly circular paths. Like our own planet, they receive their light from the central orb, and reflect it afar. The planets and all their moons (called satellites), as well as our moon, give light only as reflected sunshine, second-hand. Some of the planets are brighter than most stars, only because they are very much nearer to us and to the sun.

(8) Besides the noticeable change of position of the planets, and their shining by reflected light, another difference between planets and fixed stars is that, when seen through a telescope, planets appear larger in size than with the naked eye. This the stars never do. Most planets have an appreciable breadth, called the disk; and this seems to grow larger as the power of telescopes is increased. Stars, on the contrary, seem to be mere points of light, intensely luminous, and infinitely far away. They increase only in brilliancy with the size of our largest glasses; and even the strongest lenses cannot produce the slightest effect upon the apparent size of these stupendously distant blazing suns. Also some of the planets as seen in the telescope show phases; in particular, Venus, the brightest planet, a familiar glory of the western sky, passing through all the changing phases of our moon – full, quarter, and crescent…

(15) All these fixed stars are suns like our own – singularly similar, the modern revelations of the spectroscope tell us, as to material elements composing them. Probably, at their inconceivable distances from us, these suns afford light and heat to uncounted worlds not unlike those in the system of planets to which our earth belongs. But if such planets exist, they are too near their own central luminaries, and too faint for their reflected light ever to reach our far-off eyes. One must think of the vaster brilliance of the sun as due almost wholly to our relative nearness to him. Were the earth to be removed as far from the sun as it is distant from the stars, our lord of day would shrink to the feeble insignificance of an average star.

(21) The nearest star is so far from us that its distance in figures, however expressed, remains unapprehended by the human mind. Who can conceive of 25 millions of millions of miles? Yet so remote is our closest stellar neighbor. As the stars vary enormously in their distances from us, so they are equally diverse in their relations to each other. We see them all by the light they emit – light which does not come to us instantaneously, yet with speed almost inconceivably great. While one is taking two ordinary steps, at an average walking pace, light will travel a distance equal to eight times round the world (nearly 200,000 miles). Now, to realize in some sense the enormous distance of the nearest fixed star from our earth, open a Webster’s International Dictionary, which contains over 2000 pages of three columns each, or the equivalent. Begin to read as rapidly as you can, and imagine a ray of light to have just left the nearest fixed star at the instant you began. By the time you have finished a single page, the star’s light will have sped onward toward the earth no less than 100,000,000 miles. Imagine that you could keep right on reading, tirelessly and without ceasing, day and night, just as light itself travel – how many pages would you have read when the ray of light from Alpha Centauri, the nearest fixed star, had reached the earth? You would have read it completely through – not once, or twice, but nearly a hundred times. So enormously distant is this nearest of the stars that, if it were blotted out of existence this present moment, it would continue to shine in its accustomed place for more than three years to come. And other stars whose distances have been measured are a hundredfold more remote.

According to the passage, which of the following is NOT an observable difference between planets and stars?

When frequent looking at the nightly sky has somewhat familiarized the evening constellations, different at the same hour at the various seasons of the year, one may notice three or four very bright stars which do not twinkle. A few evenings’ watching will show that they are slowly changing their positions relatively to other and fainter stars about them. These are the planets (`wanderers’), and will at first be thought and called stars; but although speaking in the most general terms, it is proper to refer to them as stars, they are worlds, among which the earth is one, traveling round the sun in nearly circular paths. Like our own planet, they receive their light from the central orb, and reflect it afar. The planets and all their moons (called satellites), as well as our moon, give light only as reflected sunshine, second-hand. Some of the planets are brighter than most stars, only because they are very much nearer to us and to the sun.

(8) Besides the noticeable change of position of the planets, and their shining by reflected light, another difference between planets and fixed stars is that, when seen through a telescope, planets appear larger in size than with the naked eye. This the stars never do. Most planets have an appreciable breadth, called the disk; and this seems to grow larger as the power of telescopes is increased. Stars, on the contrary, seem to be mere points of light, intensely luminous, and infinitely far away. They increase only in brilliancy with the size of our largest glasses; and even the strongest lenses cannot produce the slightest effect upon the apparent size of these stupendously distant blazing suns. Also some of the planets as seen in the telescope show phases; in particular, Venus, the brightest planet, a familiar glory of the western sky, passing through all the changing phases of our moon – full, quarter, and crescent…

(15) All these fixed stars are suns like our own – singularly similar, the modern revelations of the spectroscope tell us, as to material elements composing them. Probably, at their inconceivable distances from us, these suns afford light and heat to uncounted worlds not unlike those in the system of planets to which our earth belongs. But if such planets exist, they are too near their own central luminaries, and too faint for their reflected light ever to reach our far-off eyes. One must think of the vaster brilliance of the sun as due almost wholly to our relative nearness to him. Were the earth to be removed as far from the sun as it is distant from the stars, our lord of day would shrink to the feeble insignificance of an average star.

(21) The nearest star is so far from us that its distance in figures, however expressed, remains unapprehended by the human mind. Who can conceive of 25 millions of millions of miles? Yet so remote is our closest stellar neighbor. As the stars vary enormously in their distances from us, so they are equally diverse in their relations to each other. We see them all by the light they emit – light which does not come to us instantaneously, yet with speed almost inconceivably great. While one is taking two ordinary steps, at an average walking pace, light will travel a distance equal to eight times round the world (nearly 200,000 miles). Now, to realize in some sense the enormous distance of the nearest fixed star from our earth, open a Webster’s International Dictionary, which contains over 2000 pages of three columns each, or the equivalent. Begin to read as rapidly as you can, and imagine a ray of light to have just left the nearest fixed star at the instant you began. By the time you have finished a single page, the star’s light will have sped onward toward the earth no less than 100,000,000 miles. Imagine that you could keep right on reading, tirelessly and without ceasing, day and night, just as light itself travel – how many pages would you have read when the ray of light from Alpha Centauri, the nearest fixed star, had reached the earth? You would have read it completely through – not once, or twice, but nearly a hundred times. So enormously distant is this nearest of the stars that, if it were blotted out of existence this present moment, it would continue to shine in its accustomed place for more than three years to come. And other stars whose distances have been measured are a hundredfold more remote.

The writers states that other stars are similar to the Earth’s sun in:

When frequent looking at the nightly sky has somewhat familiarized the evening constellations, different at the same hour at the various seasons of the year, one may notice three or four very bright stars which do not twinkle. A few evenings’ watching will show that they are slowly changing their positions relatively to other and fainter stars about them. These are the planets (`wanderers’), and will at first be thought and called stars; but although speaking in the most general terms, it is proper to refer to them as stars, they are worlds, among which the earth is one, traveling round the sun in nearly circular paths. Like our own planet, they receive their light from the central orb, and reflect it afar. The planets and all their moons (called satellites), as well as our moon, give light only as reflected sunshine, second-hand. Some of the planets are brighter than most stars, only because they are very much nearer to us and to the sun.

(8) Besides the noticeable change of position of the planets, and their shining by reflected light, another difference between planets and fixed stars is that, when seen through a telescope, planets appear larger in size than with the naked eye. This the stars never do. Most planets have an appreciable breadth, called the disk; and this seems to grow larger as the power of telescopes is increased. Stars, on the contrary, seem to be mere points of light, intensely luminous, and infinitely far away. They increase only in brilliancy with the size of our largest glasses; and even the strongest lenses cannot produce the slightest effect upon the apparent size of these stupendously distant blazing suns. Also some of the planets as seen in the telescope show phases; in particular, Venus, the brightest planet, a familiar glory of the western sky, passing through all the changing phases of our moon – full, quarter, and crescent…

(15) All these fixed stars are suns like our own – singularly similar, the modern revelations of the spectroscope tell us, as to material elements composing them. Probably, at their inconceivable distances from us, these suns afford light and heat to uncounted worlds not unlike those in the system of planets to which our earth belongs. But if such planets exist, they are too near their own central luminaries, and too faint for their reflected light ever to reach our far-off eyes. One must think of the vaster brilliance of the sun as due almost wholly to our relative nearness to him. Were the earth to be removed as far from the sun as it is distant from the stars, our lord of day would shrink to the feeble insignificance of an average star.

(21) The nearest star is so far from us that its distance in figures, however expressed, remains unapprehended by the human mind. Who can conceive of 25 millions of millions of miles? Yet so remote is our closest stellar neighbor. As the stars vary enormously in their distances from us, so they are equally diverse in their relations to each other. We see them all by the light they emit – light which does not come to us instantaneously, yet with speed almost inconceivably great. While one is taking two ordinary steps, at an average walking pace, light will travel a distance equal to eight times round the world (nearly 200,000 miles). Now, to realize in some sense the enormous distance of the nearest fixed star from our earth, open a Webster’s International Dictionary, which contains over 2000 pages of three columns each, or the equivalent. Begin to read as rapidly as you can, and imagine a ray of light to have just left the nearest fixed star at the instant you began. By the time you have finished a single page, the star’s light will have sped onward toward the earth no less than 100,000,000 miles. Imagine that you could keep right on reading, tirelessly and without ceasing, day and night, just as light itself travel – how many pages would you have read when the ray of light from Alpha Centauri, the nearest fixed star, had reached the earth? You would have read it completely through – not once, or twice, but nearly a hundred times. So enormously distant is this nearest of the stars that, if it were blotted out of existence this present moment, it would continue to shine in its accustomed place for more than three years to come. And other stars whose distances have been measured are a hundredfold more remote.

In lines 15 and 16, the writer hypothesizes that: 

When frequent looking at the nightly sky has somewhat familiarized the evening constellations, different at the same hour at the various seasons of the year, one may notice three or four very bright stars which do not twinkle. A few evenings’ watching will show that they are slowly changing their positions relatively to other and fainter stars about them. These are the planets (`wanderers’), and will at first be thought and called stars; but although speaking in the most general terms, it is proper to refer to them as stars, they are worlds, among which the earth is one, traveling round the sun in nearly circular paths. Like our own planet, they receive their light from the central orb, and reflect it afar. The planets and all their moons (called satellites), as well as our moon, give light only as reflected sunshine, second-hand. Some of the planets are brighter than most stars, only because they are very much nearer to us and to the sun.

(8) Besides the noticeable change of position of the planets, and their shining by reflected light, another difference between planets and fixed stars is that, when seen through a telescope, planets appear larger in size than with the naked eye. This the stars never do. Most planets have an appreciable breadth, called the disk; and this seems to grow larger as the power of telescopes is increased. Stars, on the contrary, seem to be mere points of light, intensely luminous, and infinitely far away. They increase only in brilliancy with the size of our largest glasses; and even the strongest lenses cannot produce the slightest effect upon the apparent size of these stupendously distant blazing suns. Also some of the planets as seen in the telescope show phases; in particular, Venus, the brightest planet, a familiar glory of the western sky, passing through all the changing phases of our moon – full, quarter, and crescent…

(15) All these fixed stars are suns like our own – singularly similar, the modern revelations of the spectroscope tell us, as to material elements composing them. Probably, at their inconceivable distances from us, these suns afford light and heat to uncounted worlds not unlike those in the system of planets to which our earth belongs. But if such planets exist, they are too near their own central luminaries, and too faint for their reflected light ever to reach our far-off eyes. One must think of the vaster brilliance of the sun as due almost wholly to our relative nearness to him. Were the earth to be removed as far from the sun as it is distant from the stars, our lord of day would shrink to the feeble insignificance of an average star.

(21) The nearest star is so far from us that its distance in figures, however expressed, remains unapprehended by the human mind. Who can conceive of 25 millions of millions of miles? Yet so remote is our closest stellar neighbor. As the stars vary enormously in their distances from us, so they are equally diverse in their relations to each other. We see them all by the light they emit – light which does not come to us instantaneously, yet with speed almost inconceivably great. While one is taking two ordinary steps, at an average walking pace, light will travel a distance equal to eight times round the world (nearly 200,000 miles). Now, to realize in some sense the enormous distance of the nearest fixed star from our earth, open a Webster’s International Dictionary, which contains over 2000 pages of three columns each, or the equivalent. Begin to read as rapidly as you can, and imagine a ray of light to have just left the nearest fixed star at the instant you began. By the time you have finished a single page, the star’s light will have sped onward toward the earth no less than 100,000,000 miles. Imagine that you could keep right on reading, tirelessly and without ceasing, day and night, just as light itself travel – how many pages would you have read when the ray of light from Alpha Centauri, the nearest fixed star, had reached the earth? You would have read it completely through – not once, or twice, but nearly a hundred times. So enormously distant is this nearest of the stars that, if it were blotted out of existence this present moment, it would continue to shine in its accustomed place for more than three years to come. And other stars whose distances have been measured are a hundredfold more remote.

As used in line 17, the phrase central luminaries most nearly means:

When frequent looking at the nightly sky has somewhat familiarized the evening constellations, different at the same hour at the various seasons of the year, one may notice three or four very bright stars which do not twinkle. A few evenings’ watching will show that they are slowly changing their positions relatively to other and fainter stars about them. These are the planets (`wanderers’), and will at first be thought and called stars; but although speaking in the most general terms, it is proper to refer to them as stars, they are worlds, among which the earth is one, traveling round the sun in nearly circular paths. Like our own planet, they receive their light from the central orb, and reflect it afar. The planets and all their moons (called satellites), as well as our moon, give light only as reflected sunshine, second-hand. Some of the planets are brighter than most stars, only because they are very much nearer to us and to the sun.

(8) Besides the noticeable change of position of the planets, and their shining by reflected light, another difference between planets and fixed stars is that, when seen through a telescope, planets appear larger in size than with the naked eye. This the stars never do. Most planets have an appreciable breadth, called the disk; and this seems to grow larger as the power of telescopes is increased. Stars, on the contrary, seem to be mere points of light, intensely luminous, and infinitely far away. They increase only in brilliancy with the size of our largest glasses; and even the strongest lenses cannot produce the slightest effect upon the apparent size of these stupendously distant blazing suns. Also some of the planets as seen in the telescope show phases; in particular, Venus, the brightest planet, a familiar glory of the western sky, passing through all the changing phases of our moon – full, quarter, and crescent…

(15) All these fixed stars are suns like our own – singularly similar, the modern revelations of the spectroscope tell us, as to material elements composing them. Probably, at their inconceivable distances from us, these suns afford light and heat to uncounted worlds not unlike those in the system of planets to which our earth belongs. But if such planets exist, they are too near their own central luminaries, and too faint for their reflected light ever to reach our far-off eyes. One must think of the vaster brilliance of the sun as due almost wholly to our relative nearness to him. Were the earth to be removed as far from the sun as it is distant from the stars, our lord of day would shrink to the feeble insignificance of an average star.

(21) The nearest star is so far from us that its distance in figures, however expressed, remains unapprehended by the human mind. Who can conceive of 25 millions of millions of miles? Yet so remote is our closest stellar neighbor. As the stars vary enormously in their distances from us, so they are equally diverse in their relations to each other. We see them all by the light they emit – light which does not come to us instantaneously, yet with speed almost inconceivably great. While one is taking two ordinary steps, at an average walking pace, light will travel a distance equal to eight times round the world (nearly 200,000 miles). Now, to realize in some sense the enormous distance of the nearest fixed star from our earth, open a Webster’s International Dictionary, which contains over 2000 pages of three columns each, or the equivalent. Begin to read as rapidly as you can, and imagine a ray of light to have just left the nearest fixed star at the instant you began. By the time you have finished a single page, the star’s light will have sped onward toward the earth no less than 100,000,000 miles. Imagine that you could keep right on reading, tirelessly and without ceasing, day and night, just as light itself travel – how many pages would you have read when the ray of light from Alpha Centauri, the nearest fixed star, had reached the earth? You would have read it completely through – not once, or twice, but nearly a hundred times. So enormously distant is this nearest of the stars that, if it were blotted out of existence this present moment, it would continue to shine in its accustomed place for more than three years to come. And other stars whose distances have been measured are a hundredfold more remote.

The passage states that planets outside of the Earth’s solar system are not visible from Earth because:

When frequent looking at the nightly sky has somewhat familiarized the evening constellations, different at the same hour at the various seasons of the year, one may notice three or four very bright stars which do not twinkle. A few evenings’ watching will show that they are slowly changing their positions relatively to other and fainter stars about them. These are the planets (`wanderers’), and will at first be thought and called stars; but although speaking in the most general terms, it is proper to refer to them as stars, they are worlds, among which the earth is one, traveling round the sun in nearly circular paths. Like our own planet, they receive their light from the central orb, and reflect it afar. The planets and all their moons (called satellites), as well as our moon, give light only as reflected sunshine, second-hand. Some of the planets are brighter than most stars, only because they are very much nearer to us and to the sun.

(8) Besides the noticeable change of position of the planets, and their shining by reflected light, another difference between planets and fixed stars is that, when seen through a telescope, planets appear larger in size than with the naked eye. This the stars never do. Most planets have an appreciable breadth, called the disk; and this seems to grow larger as the power of telescopes is increased. Stars, on the contrary, seem to be mere points of light, intensely luminous, and infinitely far away. They increase only in brilliancy with the size of our largest glasses; and even the strongest lenses cannot produce the slightest effect upon the apparent size of these stupendously distant blazing suns. Also some of the planets as seen in the telescope show phases; in particular, Venus, the brightest planet, a familiar glory of the western sky, passing through all the changing phases of our moon – full, quarter, and crescent…

(15) All these fixed stars are suns like our own – singularly similar, the modern revelations of the spectroscope tell us, as to material elements composing them. Probably, at their inconceivable distances from us, these suns afford light and heat to uncounted worlds not unlike those in the system of planets to which our earth belongs. But if such planets exist, they are too near their own central luminaries, and too faint for their reflected light ever to reach our far-off eyes. One must think of the vaster brilliance of the sun as due almost wholly to our relative nearness to him. Were the earth to be removed as far from the sun as it is distant from the stars, our lord of day would shrink to the feeble insignificance of an average star.

(21) The nearest star is so far from us that its distance in figures, however expressed, remains unapprehended by the human mind. Who can conceive of 25 millions of millions of miles? Yet so remote is our closest stellar neighbor. As the stars vary enormously in their distances from us, so they are equally diverse in their relations to each other. We see them all by the light they emit – light which does not come to us instantaneously, yet with speed almost inconceivably great. While one is taking two ordinary steps, at an average walking pace, light will travel a distance equal to eight times round the world (nearly 200,000 miles). Now, to realize in some sense the enormous distance of the nearest fixed star from our earth, open a Webster’s International Dictionary, which contains over 2000 pages of three columns each, or the equivalent. Begin to read as rapidly as you can, and imagine a ray of light to have just left the nearest fixed star at the instant you began. By the time you have finished a single page, the star’s light will have sped onward toward the earth no less than 100,000,000 miles. Imagine that you could keep right on reading, tirelessly and without ceasing, day and night, just as light itself travel – how many pages would you have read when the ray of light from Alpha Centauri, the nearest fixed star, had reached the earth? You would have read it completely through – not once, or twice, but nearly a hundred times. So enormously distant is this nearest of the stars that, if it were blotted out of existence this present moment, it would continue to shine in its accustomed place for more than three years to come. And other stars whose distances have been measured are a hundredfold more remote.

The writer gives which of the following explanations for planets appearing brighter than stars in the Earth’s sky?

When frequent looking at the nightly sky has somewhat familiarized the evening constellations, different at the same hour at the various seasons of the year, one may notice three or four very bright stars which do not twinkle. A few evenings’ watching will show that they are slowly changing their positions relatively to other and fainter stars about them. These are the planets (`wanderers’), and will at first be thought and called stars; but although speaking in the most general terms, it is proper to refer to them as stars, they are worlds, among which the earth is one, traveling round the sun in nearly circular paths. Like our own planet, they receive their light from the central orb, and reflect it afar. The planets and all their moons (called satellites), as well as our moon, give light only as reflected sunshine, second-hand. Some of the planets are brighter than most stars, only because they are very much nearer to us and to the sun.

(8) Besides the noticeable change of position of the planets, and their shining by reflected light, another difference between planets and fixed stars is that, when seen through a telescope, planets appear larger in size than with the naked eye. This the stars never do. Most planets have an appreciable breadth, called the disk; and this seems to grow larger as the power of telescopes is increased. Stars, on the contrary, seem to be mere points of light, intensely luminous, and infinitely far away. They increase only in brilliancy with the size of our largest glasses; and even the strongest lenses cannot produce the slightest effect upon the apparent size of these stupendously distant blazing suns. Also some of the planets as seen in the telescope show phases; in particular, Venus, the brightest planet, a familiar glory of the western sky, passing through all the changing phases of our moon – full, quarter, and crescent…

(15) All these fixed stars are suns like our own – singularly similar, the modern revelations of the spectroscope tell us, as to material elements composing them. Probably, at their inconceivable distances from us, these suns afford light and heat to uncounted worlds not unlike those in the system of planets to which our earth belongs. But if such planets exist, they are too near their own central luminaries, and too faint for their reflected light ever to reach our far-off eyes. One must think of the vaster brilliance of the sun as due almost wholly to our relative nearness to him. Were the earth to be removed as far from the sun as it is distant from the stars, our lord of day would shrink to the feeble insignificance of an average star.

(21) The nearest star is so far from us that its distance in figures, however expressed, remains unapprehended by the human mind. Who can conceive of 25 millions of millions of miles? Yet so remote is our closest stellar neighbor. As the stars vary enormously in their distances from us, so they are equally diverse in their relations to each other. We see them all by the light they emit – light which does not come to us instantaneously, yet with speed almost inconceivably great. While one is taking two ordinary steps, at an average walking pace, light will travel a distance equal to eight times round the world (nearly 200,000 miles). Now, to realize in some sense the enormous distance of the nearest fixed star from our earth, open a Webster’s International Dictionary, which contains over 2000 pages of three columns each, or the equivalent. Begin to read as rapidly as you can, and imagine a ray of light to have just left the nearest fixed star at the instant you began. By the time you have finished a single page, the star’s light will have sped onward toward the earth no less than 100,000,000 miles. Imagine that you could keep right on reading, tirelessly and without ceasing, day and night, just as light itself travel – how many pages would you have read when the ray of light from Alpha Centauri, the nearest fixed star, had reached the earth? You would have read it completely through – not once, or twice, but nearly a hundred times. So enormously distant is this nearest of the stars that, if it were blotted out of existence this present moment, it would continue to shine in its accustomed place for more than three years to come. And other stars whose distances have been measured are a hundredfold more remote.

According to the passage, Venus is comparable to the Earth’s moon in:

When frequent looking at the nightly sky has somewhat familiarized the evening constellations, different at the same hour at the various seasons of the year, one may notice three or four very bright stars which do not twinkle. A few evenings’ watching will show that they are slowly changing their positions relatively to other and fainter stars about them. These are the planets (`wanderers’), and will at first be thought and called stars; but although speaking in the most general terms, it is proper to refer to them as stars, they are worlds, among which the earth is one, traveling round the sun in nearly circular paths. Like our own planet, they receive their light from the central orb, and reflect it afar. The planets and all their moons (called satellites), as well as our moon, give light only as reflected sunshine, second-hand. Some of the planets are brighter than most stars, only because they are very much nearer to us and to the sun.

(8) Besides the noticeable change of position of the planets, and their shining by reflected light, another difference between planets and fixed stars is that, when seen through a telescope, planets appear larger in size than with the naked eye. This the stars never do. Most planets have an appreciable breadth, called the disk; and this seems to grow larger as the power of telescopes is increased. Stars, on the contrary, seem to be mere points of light, intensely luminous, and infinitely far away. They increase only in brilliancy with the size of our largest glasses; and even the strongest lenses cannot produce the slightest effect upon the apparent size of these stupendously distant blazing suns. Also some of the planets as seen in the telescope show phases; in particular, Venus, the brightest planet, a familiar glory of the western sky, passing through all the changing phases of our moon – full, quarter, and crescent…

(15) All these fixed stars are suns like our own – singularly similar, the modern revelations of the spectroscope tell us, as to material elements composing them. Probably, at their inconceivable distances from us, these suns afford light and heat to uncounted worlds not unlike those in the system of planets to which our earth belongs. But if such planets exist, they are too near their own central luminaries, and too faint for their reflected light ever to reach our far-off eyes. One must think of the vaster brilliance of the sun as due almost wholly to our relative nearness to him. Were the earth to be removed as far from the sun as it is distant from the stars, our lord of day would shrink to the feeble insignificance of an average star.

(21) The nearest star is so far from us that its distance in figures, however expressed, remains unapprehended by the human mind. Who can conceive of 25 millions of millions of miles? Yet so remote is our closest stellar neighbor. As the stars vary enormously in their distances from us, so they are equally diverse in their relations to each other. We see them all by the light they emit – light which does not come to us instantaneously, yet with speed almost inconceivably great. While one is taking two ordinary steps, at an average walking pace, light will travel a distance equal to eight times round the world (nearly 200,000 miles). Now, to realize in some sense the enormous distance of the nearest fixed star from our earth, open a Webster’s International Dictionary, which contains over 2000 pages of three columns each, or the equivalent. Begin to read as rapidly as you can, and imagine a ray of light to have just left the nearest fixed star at the instant you began. By the time you have finished a single page, the star’s light will have sped onward toward the earth no less than 100,000,000 miles. Imagine that you could keep right on reading, tirelessly and without ceasing, day and night, just as light itself travel – how many pages would you have read when the ray of light from Alpha Centauri, the nearest fixed star, had reached the earth? You would have read it completely through – not once, or twice, but nearly a hundred times. So enormously distant is this nearest of the stars that, if it were blotted out of existence this present moment, it would continue to shine in its accustomed place for more than three years to come. And other stars whose distances have been measured are a hundredfold more remote.

In line 18, the phrase our lord of day most nearly means:

When frequent looking at the nightly sky has somewhat familiarized the evening constellations, different at the same hour at the various seasons of the year, one may notice three or four very bright stars which do not twinkle. A few evenings’ watching will show that they are slowly changing their positions relatively to other and fainter stars about them. These are the planets (`wanderers’), and will at first be thought and called stars; but although speaking in the most general terms, it is proper to refer to them as stars, they are worlds, among which the earth is one, traveling round the sun in nearly circular paths. Like our own planet, they receive their light from the central orb, and reflect it afar. The planets and all their moons (called satellites), as well as our moon, give light only as reflected sunshine, second-hand. Some of the planets are brighter than most stars, only because they are very much nearer to us and to the sun.

(8) Besides the noticeable change of position of the planets, and their shining by reflected light, another difference between planets and fixed stars is that, when seen through a telescope, planets appear larger in size than with the naked eye. This the stars never do. Most planets have an appreciable breadth, called the disk; and this seems to grow larger as the power of telescopes is increased. Stars, on the contrary, seem to be mere points of light, intensely luminous, and infinitely far away. They increase only in brilliancy with the size of our largest glasses; and even the strongest lenses cannot produce the slightest effect upon the apparent size of these stupendously distant blazing suns. Also some of the planets as seen in the telescope show phases; in particular, Venus, the brightest planet, a familiar glory of the western sky, passing through all the changing phases of our moon – full, quarter, and crescent…

(15) All these fixed stars are suns like our own – singularly similar, the modern revelations of the spectroscope tell us, as to material elements composing them. Probably, at their inconceivable distances from us, these suns afford light and heat to uncounted worlds not unlike those in the system of planets to which our earth belongs. But if such planets exist, they are too near their own central luminaries, and too faint for their reflected light ever to reach our far-off eyes. One must think of the vaster brilliance of the sun as due almost wholly to our relative nearness to him. Were the earth to be removed as far from the sun as it is distant from the stars, our lord of day would shrink to the feeble insignificance of an average star.

(21) The nearest star is so far from us that its distance in figures, however expressed, remains unapprehended by the human mind. Who can conceive of 25 millions of millions of miles? Yet so remote is our closest stellar neighbor. As the stars vary enormously in their distances from us, so they are equally diverse in their relations to each other. We see them all by the light they emit – light which does not come to us instantaneously, yet with speed almost inconceivably great. While one is taking two ordinary steps, at an average walking pace, light will travel a distance equal to eight times round the world (nearly 200,000 miles). Now, to realize in some sense the enormous distance of the nearest fixed star from our earth, open a Webster’s International Dictionary, which contains over 2000 pages of three columns each, or the equivalent. Begin to read as rapidly as you can, and imagine a ray of light to have just left the nearest fixed star at the instant you began. By the time you have finished a single page, the star’s light will have sped onward toward the earth no less than 100,000,000 miles. Imagine that you could keep right on reading, tirelessly and without ceasing, day and night, just as light itself travel – how many pages would you have read when the ray of light from Alpha Centauri, the nearest fixed star, had reached the earth? You would have read it completely through – not once, or twice, but nearly a hundred times. So enormously distant is this nearest of the stars that, if it were blotted out of existence this present moment, it would continue to shine in its accustomed place for more than three years to come. And other stars whose distances have been measured are a hundredfold more remote.

The main purpose of the fourth paragraph (lines 21–30) is to:

When frequent looking at the nightly sky has somewhat familiarized the evening constellations, different at the same hour at the various seasons of the year, one may notice three or four very bright stars which do not twinkle. A few evenings’ watching will show that they are slowly changing their positions relatively to other and fainter stars about them. These are the planets (`wanderers’), and will at first be thought and called stars; but although speaking in the most general terms, it is proper to refer to them as stars, they are worlds, among which the earth is one, traveling round the sun in nearly circular paths. Like our own planet, they receive their light from the central orb, and reflect it afar. The planets and all their moons (called satellites), as well as our moon, give light only as reflected sunshine, second-hand. Some of the planets are brighter than most stars, only because they are very much nearer to us and to the sun.

(8) Besides the noticeable change of position of the planets, and their shining by reflected light, another difference between planets and fixed stars is that, when seen through a telescope, planets appear larger in size than with the naked eye. This the stars never do. Most planets have an appreciable breadth, called the disk; and this seems to grow larger as the power of telescopes is increased. Stars, on the contrary, seem to be mere points of light, intensely luminous, and infinitely far away. They increase only in brilliancy with the size of our largest glasses; and even the strongest lenses cannot produce the slightest effect upon the apparent size of these stupendously distant blazing suns. Also some of the planets as seen in the telescope show phases; in particular, Venus, the brightest planet, a familiar glory of the western sky, passing through all the changing phases of our moon – full, quarter, and crescent…

(15) All these fixed stars are suns like our own – singularly similar, the modern revelations of the spectroscope tell us, as to material elements composing them. Probably, at their inconceivable distances from us, these suns afford light and heat to uncounted worlds not unlike those in the system of planets to which our earth belongs. But if such planets exist, they are too near their own central luminaries, and too faint for their reflected light ever to reach our far-off eyes. One must think of the vaster brilliance of the sun as due almost wholly to our relative nearness to him. Were the earth to be removed as far from the sun as it is distant from the stars, our lord of day would shrink to the feeble insignificance of an average star.

(21) The nearest star is so far from us that its distance in figures, however expressed, remains unapprehended by the human mind. Who can conceive of 25 millions of millions of miles? Yet so remote is our closest stellar neighbor. As the stars vary enormously in their distances from us, so they are equally diverse in their relations to each other. We see them all by the light they emit – light which does not come to us instantaneously, yet with speed almost inconceivably great. While one is taking two ordinary steps, at an average walking pace, light will travel a distance equal to eight times round the world (nearly 200,000 miles). Now, to realize in some sense the enormous distance of the nearest fixed star from our earth, open a Webster’s International Dictionary, which contains over 2000 pages of three columns each, or the equivalent. Begin to read as rapidly as you can, and imagine a ray of light to have just left the nearest fixed star at the instant you began. By the time you have finished a single page, the star’s light will have sped onward toward the earth no less than 100,000,000 miles. Imagine that you could keep right on reading, tirelessly and without ceasing, day and night, just as light itself travel – how many pages would you have read when the ray of light from Alpha Centauri, the nearest fixed star, had reached the earth? You would have read it completely through – not once, or twice, but nearly a hundred times. So enormously distant is this nearest of the stars that, if it were blotted out of existence this present moment, it would continue to shine in its accustomed place for more than three years to come. And other stars whose distances have been measured are a hundredfold more remote.

In lines 29 and 30, the writer states

So enormously distant is this nearest of the stars that, if it were blotted out of existence this present moment, it would continue to shine in its accustomed place for more than three years to come.

What does the writer mean by this statement?