The sidereal messenger of Galileo Galilei : $b and a part of the preface to Kepler's Dioptrics containing the original account of Galileo's astronomical discoveriesGalilei, Galileo
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The sidereal messenger of Galileo Galilei : $b and a part of the preface to Kepler's Dioptrics containing the original account of Galileo's astronomical discoveries
Galilei, Galileo
Astronomy -- Early works to 1800; Jupiter (Planet) -- Satellites
There is one other point which I must on no account forget, which I
have noticed and rather wondered at. It is this:—The middle of the
Moon, as it seems, is occupied by a certain cavity larger than all the
rest, and in shape perfectly round. I have looked at this depression
near both the first and third quarters, and I have represented it as
well as I can in the second illustration already given. It produces
the same appearance as to effects of light and shade as a tract like
Bohemia would produce on the Earth, if it were shut in on all sides by
very lofty mountains arranged on the circumference of a perfect circle;
for the tract in the Moon is walled in with peaks of such enormous
height that the furthest side adjacent to the dark portion of the
Moon is seen bathed in sunlight before the boundary between light and
shade reaches half-way across the circular space. But according to the
characteristic property of the rest of the spots, the shaded portion of
this too faces the Sun, and the bright part is towards the dark side of
the Moon, which for the third time I advise to be carefully noticed as
a most solid proof of the ruggednesses and unevennesses spread over the
whole of the bright region of the Moon. Of these spots, moreover, the
darkest are always those which are near to the boundary-line between
the light and the shadow, but those further off appear both smaller
in size and less decidedly dark; so that at length, when the Moon at
opposition becomes full, the darkness of the cavities differs from the
brightness of the prominences with a subdued and very slight difference.
[Sidenote: Reasons for believing that there is a difference of
constitution in various parts of the Moon’s surface.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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