And if we had to mark the nearest fixed star on our chart made on a
scale of 1 inch to the million miles, we should find that whereas a
sheet of 465 feet would take in the outermost planet of the solar
system, a sheet to take in the nearest fixed star would have to be
about 620 miles wide. On this sheet, as wide as from London to
Inverness, the Sun would be represented by a dot three-quarters of
an inch in diameter, and the Earth by a pin-prick.

But these immense distances only relate to the _nearest_ stars.
Now, the nearest stars are about four "light years" distant from us.
That is to say, that light, travelling at a rate of about 182,000
miles in _one second_, takes four years to come from the nearest
fixed star to the Earth.

But I have seen the distance from the Earth to the Great Nebula in
Orion given as _a thousand light years_, or 250 times the distance
of the fixed star above alluded to.

To reach that nebula at 60 miles an hour, an express train would
have to travel for 35 millions of years multiplied by 250--that is
to say, for 8,750 million years.

And yet there are millions of stars whose distances are even greater
than the distance of the Great Nebula in Orion.

How many stars are there? No one can even guess. But L. Struve
estimates the number of those visible to the great telescopes at
20 millions.