The most obvious inference would therefore be that the earth's distance from the sun had been diminished from 91,000,000 to 66,000,000 miles.

If the just equilibrium of the earth had thus been destroyed, and should this diminution of distance still continue, would there not be reason to fear that the terrestrial world would be carried onwards to actual contact with the sun, which must result in its total annihilation?
The continuance of the splendid weather afforded Servadac every facility for observing the heavens.

Night after night, constellations in their beauty lay stretched before his eyes--an alphabet which, to his mortification, not to say his rage, he was unable to decipher.

In the apparent dimensions of the fixed stars, in their distance, in their relative position with regard to each other, he could observe no change.
Although it is established that our sun is approaching the constellation of Hercules at the rate of more than 126,000,000 miles a year, and although Arcturus is traveling through space at the rate of fifty-four miles a second--three times faster than the earth goes round the sun,--yet such is the remoteness of those stars that no appreciable change is evident to the senses.

The fixed stars taught him nothing.
Far otherwise was it with the planets.