ARE THERE PLANETS AMONG THE STARS?

Pleasures of the Telescope by Garrett Putman Serviss is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. ARE THERE PLANETS AMONG THE STARS?

ARE THERE PLANETS AMONG THE STARS?

"... And if there should beWorlds greater than thine own, inhabitedBy greater things, and they themselves far moreIn number than the dust of thy dull earth,What wouldst thou think?"—Byron's Cain.This always interesting question has lately been revived in a startling manner by discoveries that have seemed to reach almost deep enough to touch its solution. The following sentences, from the pen of Dr. T. J. J. See, of the Lowell Observatory, are very significant from this point of view:"Our observations during 1896-'97 have certainly disclosed stars more difficult than any which astronomers had seen before. Among these obscure objects about half a dozen are truly wonderful, in that they seem to be dark, almost black in color, and apparently are shining by a dull reflected light. It is unlikely that they will prove to be self-luminous. If they should turn out dark bodies in fact, shining only by the reflected light of the stars around which they revolve, we should have the first case of planets—dark bodies—noticed among the fixed stars."Of course, Dr. See has no reference in this statement to the immense dark bodies which, in recent years, have been discovered by spectroscopic methods revolving around some of the visible stars, although invisible themselves. The obscure objects that he describes belong to a different class, and might be likened, except perhaps 

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