Hardy's intention, in his own words, was to " set the emotional history of two infinitesimal lives against the stupendous background of the stellar universe ".
2.
He also succeeded Proctor as editor of " Knowledge, " to which he contributed a long series of articles upon the sun and moon, the milky way, the stellar universe, star-clusters, the density of nebulae, & c.
3.
A Hubble Space Telescope study designed to study evolution in the stellar universe has taken a mosaic of photos that includes more than 40, 000 galaxies in a patch of sky about the size of the full moon.