That instrument is also revealing to us the duration of the life of a star, through changes in the refrangibility of the emitted light.

Though, as we have seen, the nearest to us is at an enormous and all but immeasurable distance, this is but the first step--there are others the rays of which have taken thousands, perhaps millions, of years to reach us! The limits of our own system are far beyond the range of our greatest telescopes; what, then, shall we say of other systems beyond?
Worlds are scattered like dust in the abysses in space.
Have these gigantic bodies--myriads of which are placed at so vast a distance that our unassisted eyes cannot perceive them--have these no other purpose than that assigned by theologians, to give light to us?
Does not their enormous size demonstrate that, as they are centres of force, so they must be centres of motion--suns for other systems of worlds?
While yet these facts were very imperfectly known--indeed, were rather speculations than facts--Giordano Bruno, an Italian, born seven years after the death of Copernicus, published a work on the "Infinity of the Universe and of Worlds;" he was also the author of "Evening Conversations on Ash-Wednesday," an apology for the Copernican system, and of "The One Sole Cause of Things." To these may be added an allegory published in 1584, "The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast." He had also collected, for the use of future astronomers, all the observations he could find respecting the new star that suddenly appeared in Cassiopeia, A.D.1572, and increased in brilliancy, until it surpassed all the other stars.

It could be plainly seen in the daytime.

On a sudden, November 11th, it was as bright as Venus at her brightest.

In the following March it was of the first magnitude.