Show the number of the stars the total number of stars one can see will depend very largely upon the clearness of the atmosphere and the keenness of the eye there are m the whole celestial sphere about stars risible to an ordinarily good eye of these how derwe can never see more thant fraction at any one time because a half of the sphere is always below the horizon if we could see a star in the horizon as easily as in the zenith a half of the whole number or would be visible on any clear night but stars near the bonzon are seen through so great a thickness of atmosphere as greatly to obscure their light and only the brightest ones can there be seen As a result of this obscuration ii is no f likely that 2000 stars can ever be taken in at a single view by any ordinary eye about 2000 other stare are so near the south pole that they never rise in our latitudes hence out of supposed to be visible only ever come within the range oi our vision unless we make a journey towards the equator As telescopic power is increased we still find stars of fainter and fainter light but the number cannot go on increasing for ever in the same ratio as with the brighter magnitudes because if it did the whole sky would be a blaze of starlight if telescopes with powers far exceeding our present ones were made they would not doubt show new stars of the twentieth and twenty first etc magnitudes but it is highly probable that the number of such successive ordas of stars would not increase in the sama as the eighth cinthy and tenth magni for example the enormous labor of estimating the number of stars of such classes will long prevent accumulation of statistics on this question but this much is certain chatin th atin special regions of the sky searchingly examined by telescopes of successively ces ju creasing ahe 6 ne nev v stars foan dig by na means in proportion to tha increased power ia founds to bo true elsewhere the that after all stellar system can be experimentally shown to be of finite extent and to a finite number of stars alsy an eye I 1 power will see about stars as I 1 I 1 have just said with a telescope this number is greatly increased and the most of modem times will than T stars of this number not one out of ono hundred has over been cataloguer catalogued catalo gued at all in all stars from the first to the 9 magnitudes are contained in the northern sky or about in both hemispheres AH of these can be seen with a 3 inch object glass professor ja sholden in the A century |