If we now consider the number of the stars (15,000
x 106 visible to the optical telescope alone) you will understand how it is possible to say, cosmically speaking, that we are enveloped in a sort of monstrous gas formed of molecules as heavy as the Sun
moving at
distances from each other so great that they have to be reckoned in light - years (bearing in mind that light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second, and that we are only 8 light - minutes distant from the sun)-- a gas made of stars!