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Don José Joaquim de Ferrer, however, who observed a total eclipse of the sun at Kinderhook, in the State of New York, on June 16, 1806, ignoring this refined optical rationale, considered two alternative explanations of the phenomenon as alone possible. The bright ring round the moon must be due to the illumination either of a lunar or of a solar atmosphere.
If it were otherwise, the lunar mountains would appear as simple luminous points rising from a dark floor, over which they would cast a conical shadow.
After this there are three or four pages descriptive of various lunar scenes and animals, the latter showing a tendency, singular considering the circumstances, though very convenient for the narrator, to become higher and higher in type as the discoveries proceed, until an animal somewhat of the nature of the missing link is discovered.
Although Galileo had for a long time abandoned his astronomical studies, yet his attention was directed, about the year 1636, to a curious appearance in the lunar disc, which is known by the name of the moon's libration. When we examine with a telescope the outline of the moon, we observe that certain parts of her disc, which are seen at one time, are invisible at another.
There must be two Ashtamis in every lunar month. A particular Ashtami is known as the Kamya or the Goshtha. On that day, kine are worshipped with sandalpaste, vermilion, floral wreaths, etc. Sikhi means a bull, so called from the hump it carries. The construction is sikhi Vrishaiva etc,
At half-past two in the morning the bullet was over the 30th lunar parallel at an effective distance of 1,000 kilometres, reduced by the optical instruments to ten. It still seemed impossible that it could reach any point on the disc. Its movement of translation, relatively slow, was inexplicable to President Barbicane.
And so could we, if we only remember that Tycho, though nearly a quarter of a million miles distant, is such a luminous point on the lunar disc, that almost any moonlit night it can be easily perceived by the unaided terrestrial eye. What then must have been its splendor in the eyes of our travellers whose telescopes brought it actually four thousand times nearer!
It is a region for ever "desolate and without inhabitant," trackless, waterless, silent, as if it had passed into the passionless calm of lunar solitudes. It is composed of rough hummocks of pahoehoe, rising out of a sandy desert.
And now Earthshine fell upon the moon. It was many times brighter than moonlight ever was upon the Earth. Even at lunar sunset the Earthlight was sixteen times brighter. At midnight, when the Earth was full, it would be bright enough for any activity.
On the forty-third day from land, a long time to be at sea alone, the sky being beautifully clear and the moon being "in distance" with the sun, I threw up my sextant for sights. I found from the result of three observations, after long wrestling with lunar tables, that her longitude by observation agreed within five miles of that by dead-reckoning.
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