IMMENSITY OF SPACE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 113, 16 May 1925, Page 16

IMMENSITY OF SPACE

MEASURING HEAVENLY DIS-

TANCE.

One of the finest of the spiral nebulao ■m the heavens is, that known as the Great Nebula in Andromeda, which on moonless nighte is plainly visible to the naked eye and quite' a fine object in a good pair of binoculars. Many attempts have been made to determine its* distance, and a recent .measurement by an American astronomer is reported in the last issue of "Popular Astronomy." According to this, the nebulae is probably? at; least. 950,000 Jiglit years''from the earth—that is, the light from it takes that enormous period to traverse the gulf separating us, and light travels at 300,000 kilometres a secoud. A light year—the distance light moves in one year—is 5,880,348,500,000' miles, so that the distance of the Andromeda, Nebula is ■5,586,000,000,000,000,000 miles. Some, years ago a new star appeared ■in the Andromeda Nebula, which, when brightest, whs about the seventh magnitude, too faint'to" be sf-en with the naked eye. It remained at the seventh magnitude only a few years, and then slowly Taded away, being -of the sixteenth magnitude,. barely'"visible in'the largest telescopes six months later. But not even the Andromeda Nebula marks, it is believed, the boundary,' for by similar refined .methods a distance of 1,000,000 light years has beer, calculated for another nebula, which would place it .30,000. billion miles uiiue distant, Uiuu thai in AjndrpmeiauL