A Short Story by Story Realm

Illustrated by Story Realm

Narrated by Alden Phelps

MUCH can be observed if you will look with your eyes. Since I was a small boy I have looked up into the night and tried to understand what I am seeing there. And by looking I have learned many things. When I look up into the darkness it is lit by stars that cannot be counted, each one a sun just like our own. I cannot know about all of these stars, I only see them as points of light, but I can learn many things by studying our own star, our sun.

And here are things I know. Our Earth circles round this sun in an oval-shaped path, an orbit. And not our Earth only, but other planets as well (I have counted eight of them), an entire system of planets with their moons going round and round our Sun—a Solar System it may be called, solar meaning “sun,” a system around the sun. Do you not think it possible that in times to come we will learn that all of these many stars we see at night have solar systems as well?

Others have observed these planets also, and they have been given names—Mercury, Venus, our Earth, and Mars are the smaller ones, these are close to the Sun. They are similar in composition and size, rocky like our Earth, and so we call them “terrestrial.” These I can see with only my eyes, their light is brighter and more steady than the pulsing light of the stars with which they share the sky. I can find no moons circling Mercury and Venus. Our Earth has one moon of course, and Mars has two that are very, very small. My eyes need the help of a telescope to see the planets hanging further away from our Sun—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. These are giant worlds orbited by so many small moons I think sometimes they are like small solar systems themselves. But they are not. These are planets not stars, planets with many moons but without solid ground, planets made of liquid and gas, with rings of rock and dust circling them like the halos of angels.

There are other things too in this system of objects that circles round our sun. Asteroids are chunks of rock and ice, too small to be planets but circling just the same. And comets. They are different from other things in the sky because they have a mighty tail that streams out behind them as they pass before our eyes. I will tell you what I think. I think that these are made of ice and when they pass too close to the Sun the ice that is near is melted into gas that chases the ice that remains across the sky. It is a rare and wonderful thing to see!

Listen Friend, I can tell you only of things that I see with my eyes and with the help of my telescope. But when I look into the sky and study what I see, mysteries and shadows of things that have not yet come to pass make themselves known to me. I do not comprehend these things! Telescopes so powerful they see sixty-three moons around Jupiter where I see only four, and fifty-six moons around Saturn where my eyes see only the rings. An observatory that can see inside the Sun and study the very particles that flow from its fiery surface. And photographs of galaxies and solar systems so far beyond our own that they cannot be seen at all from our Earth. Pictures bright with color showing us that things exist beyond what our eyes can see and that they are beautiful. How can this be? I do not know. I do not know how these things will come to pass, but I can tell you they are true. They are true!