The first sentiment the reader will feel on this subject is
doubtless one of surprise that the distance of the star should be
so great as this explanation would imply. Six months after the
explosion, the globe of light, as actually photographed, was of a
size which would have been visible to the naked eye only as a very
minute object in the sky. Is it possible that this minute object
could have been thousands of times the dimensions of our solar
system?

To see how the question stands from this point of view, we must
have some idea of the possible distance of the new star. To gain
this idea, we must find some way of estimating distances in the
universe. For a reason which will soon be apparent, we begin with
the greatest structure which nature offers to the view of man. We
all know that the Milky Way is formed of countless stars, too
minute to be individually visible to the naked eye. The more
powerful the telescope through which we sweep the heavens, the
greater the number of the stars that can be seen in it. With the
powerful instruments which are now in use for photographing the
sky, the number of stars brought to light must rise into the
hundreds of millions, and the greater part of these belong to the
Milky Way. The smaller the stars we count, the greater their
comparative number in the region of the Milky Way. Of the stars
visible through the telescope, more than one-half are found in the
Milky Way, which may be regarded as a girdle spanning the entire
visible universe.

Of the diameter of this girdle we can say, almost with certainty,
that it must be more than a thousand times as great as the
distance of the nearest fixed star from us, and is probably two or