Pleasures of the telescope: An Illustrated Guide for Amateur Astronomers and a Popular Description of the Chief Wonders of the Heavens for General ReadersServiss, Garrett Putman
Science
Pleasures of the telescope: An Illustrated Guide for Amateur Astronomers and a Popular Description of the Chief Wonders of the Heavens for General Readers
[Illustration: LUNAR CHART NO. 2, SOUTHWEST QUARTER.]
Suppose that our observations are now interrupted, to be resumed when
the moon, about "seven days old," is in its first quarter. If we had
time, it would be a most interesting thing to watch the advance of the
lunar sunrise every night, for new beauties are displayed almost from
hour to hour; but, for the purposes of our description it is necessary
to curtail the observations. At first quarter one half of the lunar
hemisphere which faces the earth is illuminated by the sun, and the line
of sunrise runs across some of the most wonderful regions of the moon.
We begin, referring once more to Lunar Chart No. 1, in the neighborhood
of the north pole of the moon. Here the line along which day and night
meet is twisted and broken, owing to the roughness of the lunar surface.
About fifteen degrees southwest of the pole lies a remarkable
square-cornered, mountain-bordered plain, about forty miles in length,
called Barrow. Very close to the pole is a ring mountain, about
twenty-five miles in diameter, whose two loftiest peaks, 8,000 to 9,000
feet high, according to Neison, must, from their situation, enjoy
perpetual day.
The long, narrow, dark plain, whose nearest edge is about thirty degrees
south of the pole, is the _Mare Frigoris_, bordered on both sides by
uplands and mountains. At its southern edge we find the magnificent
Aristoteles, a mountain ring, sixty miles across, whose immense wall is
composed of terraces and ridges running up to lofty peaks, which rise
nearly 11,000 feet above the floor of the valley. About a hundred miles
south of Aristoteles is Eudoxus, another fine mountain ring, forty miles
in diameter, and quite as deep as its northern neighbor. These two make
a most striking spectacle.
We are now in the neighborhood of the greatest mountain chains on the
moon, the lunar Alps lying to the east and the lunar Caucasus to the
south of Aristoteles and Eudoxus, while still farther south, separated
from the Caucasus by a strait not more than a hundred miles broad,
begins the mighty range of the lunar Apennines. We first turn the
telescope on the Alps. As the line of sunrise runs directly across their
highest peaks, the effect is startling. The greatest elevations are
about 12,000 feet. The observer's eye is instantly caught by a great
valley, running like a furrow through the center of the mountain mass,
and about eighty or ninety miles in length. The sealike expanse south
and southeast of the Alps is the _Mare Imbrium_, and it is along the
coast of this so-called sea that the Alps attain their greatest height.
The valley, or gorge, above mentioned, appears to cut through the
loftiest mountains and to reach the "coast," although it is so narrowed
and broken among the greater peaks that its southern portion is almost
lost before it actually reaches the _Mare Imbrium_. Opening wider again
as it enters the _Mare_, it forms a deep bay among precipitous
mountains.
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