Progress in astronomy has removed the early superstitions regarding our solar system and the stars beyond. The Grecian myth that the sun is a flaming chariot daily driven by Apollo across the heavens has gone. But it is within the past seventy-five years that startling advances have been made in increasing men's knowledge of the stellar universe.
Astronomers measure the effectiveness of a telescope chiefly by its capacity to gather light from a distant star, and to focus that light so as to produce a much brighter image of the star. Galileo, in 1609, made a small telescope with a light-gathering power thirty-two times that of the human eye. By 1869 a telescope had been made which had a light-gathering power over five thousand times that of the eye. In 1917, a telescope was in use whose power was ninety thousand times that of the eye.
Today a telescope is nearing completion whose light-gathering power is three hundred and sixty thousand times that of the eye. But this is not all. Since 1900, photographic plates have been made which are one hundred times more sensitive than the eye. These plates, used with the telescope last mentioned, increase men's potential awareness of the material universe thirty-six million times that afforded by the human eye.
