Astronomy with an Opera-glass: A Popular Introduction to the Study of the Starry Heavens with the Simplest of Optical InstrumentsServiss, Garrett Putman
Science
Astronomy with an Opera-glass: A Popular Introduction to the Study of the Starry Heavens with the Simplest of Optical Instruments
Serviss, Garrett Putman
Astronomy
Let us now glance at some of the mountains and "craters." The dark oval
called Grimaldi (1) can be detected by the naked eye, or at least it has
been thus seen, although it requires a sharp eye; and perhaps a shade or
a pair of eye-glasses of London smoke-glass, to take off the glare of
the moon, should be used in looking for it.[F] It is simply a plain,
containing some fourteen thousand square miles, remarkable for its dark
color, and surrounded by mountains. Schickhard (7) is another similar
plain, nearly as large, but not possessing the same dark tint in the
interior. The huge mountains around Schickhard make a fine spectacle
when the sun is rising upon them shortly before full moon.
[F] There are other uses to which such eye-glasses may be put
by sky-gazers. I habitually carry a pair for studying clouds.
It is wonderful how much the effect of great cloud-masses is
heightened by them, especially when seen in a bright light.
Delicate curls and striae of cirrus, which escape the uncovered
eye in the glare of sunlight, can be readily detected and
studied by the use of neutral-tinted eye-glasses or spectacles.
Tycho (9) is the most famous of the crater-mountains, though not the
largest. It is about fifty-four miles across and three miles deep. In
its center is a peak five or six thousand feet high. Tycho is the radial
point of the great light-streaks that, as I have already remarked, cause
the southern half of the moon to be likened to a peeled orange. It is a
tough problem in selenography to account for these streaks. They are
best seen at full moon. They can not be seen at all until the sun has
risen to a certain elevation above them, 25 deg. according to Neison; but,
when they once become visible, they dominate everything. They turn aside
for neither mountains nor plains, but pass straight on their courses
over the ruggedest regions of the moon, retaining their brilliancy
undiminished, and pouring back such a flood of reflected light that they
completely conceal some of the most stupendous mountain-masses across
which they lie. They clearly consist of different material from that of
which the most of the moon's surface is composed--a material possessing
a higher reflective power. In this respect they resemble Aristarchus and
other lunar craters that are remarkable for their brilliancy under a
high illumination. Tycho itself, the center or hub, from which these
streaks radiate like spokes, is very brilliant in the full moon. But
immediately around Tycho there is a dark rim some twenty-five miles
broad. Beyond this rim the surface becomes bright, and the bright region
extends about ninety miles farther. Out of it spring the great rays or
streaks, which vary from ten to twenty miles in width, and many of which
are several hundred miles long--one, which we have already mentioned as
extending across the Sea of Serenity, being upward of two thousand miles
in length.
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