And, with perhaps a hint of sadness, he added:
Straight ahead of him, nobody can go very far . . .
Chapter 4
I had thus learned a second fact of great importance: this was that the planet the little prince came from was scarcely any larger than a house!
But that did not really surprise me much.
I knew very well that in addition to the great planets--such as the Earth, Jupiter, Mars, Venus--to which we have given names, there are also hundreds of others, some of which are so small that one has a hard time seeing them through the telescope.
When an astronomer discovers one of these he does not give it a name, but only a number.
He might call it, for example, "Asteroid 325."
I have serious reason to believe that the planet from which the little prince came is the asteroid known as B-612.
This asteroid has only once been seen through the telescope. That was by a Turkish astronomer, in 1909.