The Children's Book of Stars

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Mitton Geraldine Edith. The Children's Book of Stars

PREFACE

AUTHOR'S NOTE

CHAPTER I. THE EARTH

CHAPTER II. HANGING IN SPACE

CHAPTER III. THE SHINING MOON

CHAPTER IV. THE EARTH'S BROTHERS AND SISTER

CHAPTER V. FOUR SMALL WORLDS

CHAPTER VI. FOUR LARGE WORLDS

CHAPTER VII. THE SUN

CHAPTER VIII. SHINING VISITORS

CHAPTER IX. SHOOTING STARS AND FIERY BALLS

CHAPTER X. THE GLITTERING HEAVENS

CHAPTER XI. THE CONSTELLATIONS

CHAPTER XII. WHAT THE STARS ARE MADE OF

CHAPTER XIII. RESTLESS STARS

CHAPTER XIV. THE COLOURS OF THE STARS

CHAPTER XV. TEMPORARY AND VARIABLE STARS

CHAPTER XVI. STAR CLUSTERS AND NEBULÆ

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This little work is the outcome of many suggestions on the part of friends who were anxious to teach their small children something of the marvels of the heavens, but found it exceedingly difficult to get hold of a book wherein the intense fascination of the subject was not lost in conventional phraseology – a book in which the stupendous facts were stated in language simple enough to be read aloud to a child without paraphrase.

Whatever merit there may be in the present work is due entirely to my friend Agnes Clerke, the well-known writer on astronomy; the faults are all my own. She gave me the impetus to begin by her warm encouragement, and she helped me to continue by hearing every chapter read as it was written, and by discussing its successor and making suggestions for it. Thus she heard the whole book in MS. A week after the last chapter had been read to her I started on a journey lasting many months, and while I was in the Far East the news reached me of her death, by which the world is the poorer. For her sake, as he has stated, her friend Sir David Gill, K.C.B., kindly undertook to supply the missing preface.

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'How long would it take a man to go round the earth if he never stopped to eat or drink on the way?'

And the prisoner answered promptly: 'If he rose with the sun and kept pace with it all day, and never stopped for a moment to eat or drink, he would take just twenty-four hours, Your Royal Highness.' For in those days it was supposed that the sun went round the earth.

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