The Moon: A Popular TreatiseServiss, Garrett Putman
Science
The Moon: A Popular Treatise
Serviss, Garrett Putman
Moon
“Above Copernicus you see a large crater ring more than half in shadow,
with a plain of an irregular hexagonal shape, northwest of it. The large
ring is named Reinhold. A broken mass of mountains extends from its
southern side far into the _Mare Nubium_. In the upper right-hand corner
of the picture is another large ring called Landsberg. In the upper
left-hand corner you see a roughly hexagonal ring plain, level on the
interior, named Gambart. Mountains break the level of the _mare_ both
south and north of Gambart. Those on the north are remarkable for the
darkness of the surface, especially in the northwestern part.
“Almost directly west of Copernicus lies an exceedingly singular object.
It is a part of the underworld of the moon, the buried moon, which was
covered up ages ago by that immense outgush of lava of which I have so
often spoken. Once evidently it was a ring larger than Eratosthenes.
Now, only its outlines can be traced, the whole immense depression of
the interior and the surrounding walls to their very top having been
covered up. It is pitted and surrounded with little craters of a later
date. I have already told you that Eratosthenes, the ring at the
left-hand edge of the photograph, marks the termination of the great
range of the lunar Apennines. But these mountains seem to be continued
beyond Eratosthenes in two short branches, one turning eastward toward
the Carpathians, and the other reaching to the highest part of the
buried wall of the submerged ring that we have been talking about and
which bears the name of Stadius. You will be interested in knowing that
southwest of Stadius, but off the edge of the picture, there is a place
in which low hills and ridges abound, where the German astronomer
Schröter imagined that he had discovered a lunar city! His mistake was,
perhaps, natural, considering the slight power of his telescope and the
strangely regular arrangement of the lines of hills which he mistook for
streets.”
“I regret that he was deceived.”
[Illustration:
TWO GREAT LUNAR “SEAS”
The _Mare Serenitatis_ and a Part of the _Mare Imbrium_.
]
“So do I. We shall now leave Copernicus and its marvelous surroundings,
and turn to the last photograph in our series, representing the _Mare
Serenitatis_ in its full extent, and a large part of the _Mare Imbrium_.
Is it not a beautiful picture?”
“It is, indeed, but so strange!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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