MILLIONS OF STARS

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 21, 24 July 1936, Page 7

MILLIONS OF STARS

TALK ON THE MILKY WAY "Wellington wants a. telescope. If these talks of- mine' do anything towards bringing the advent of a observatory for Wellington any. nearer, I shall feel rewarded," remarked Mr. A. C. Gifford when giving in the Town Hall Concert Chamber last evening the second of his free lectures on astronomy. On behalf'of the City Council the lecturer was thanked by Councillor. M. F. Luckie, who said that he had 'great hopes that something would soon be done to give effect to the Carter Bequest which had been accumulating for 38 years. The site for a city observatory was there in the Botanical Gardens, a good telescope was available, and before long he hoped that a start would be made with erecting the observatory. The Government, he believed, was in favour of the project. , Mr. Gifford's lecture was entitled The Marvels of the Milky Way." He told his audience,; rather a thin one owing to the inclemency of the weather, much of. interest about the stars and many beautiful,lantern slides were used to illustrate his remarks. We did not know, he said, how many stars there were. There might be a hundred thousand million, or. twice that number. Neither did we know what extent, m space they occupied, although many ingenious attempts were being made to measure the extent of the universe. Estimates as to the size of the latter tended to get smaller, and it was now thought to be 100,000 lightyears across. As we could only look upon the Milky Way from within, it was very difficult to get an idea of its shape, but it was probably a flattened system. Our own sun was really a dwarf star if general comparisons were made, but it was the only one we knew of with a planetary system of its own. The slides shown included some very beautiful ones of nebulae and clusters, whilst others ' showed the making of the giant lens which is destined to reveal a, great deal more about the heavens than is known a? present.