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Updated: June 8, 2025
"According to what has been said above the epoch of the moon's perigee must first be chosen, and at the moment when she will be crossing her zenith, which will still further diminish the entire distance by a length equal to the terrestrial radius i.e., 3,919 miles; consequently, the passage to be accomplished will be 214,976 miles.
Now, by a fortunate circumstance, on the 4th of December in the ensuing year the moon will present these two conditions. At midnight she will be in perigee, that is, at her shortest distance from the earth, and at the same moment she will be crossing the zenith. On the fifth question, "At what point in the heavens ought the cannon to be aimed?" Answer.
It was clearly understood that when at her apogee the moon was farthest from the earth, and when at her perigee she was nearest to our planet. This, therefore, was what every American knew whether he wished to or no, and what no one could decently be ignorant of. But if these true principles rapidly made their way, certain illusive fears and many errors were with difficulty cleared away.
It has reached the perigee mark and must overflow. If it reaches you and gives you a thorough soaking, I shall feel satisfied. I have always known you were only half-developed. There are many such people in the world. They serve their purpose and often do much good. They miss a great deal of life, but as they rarely know that they miss anything, it is a waste of sentiment to pity them.
And so the dance whizzed on with cumulative fury, the performers moving in their planet-like courses, direct and retrograde, from apogee to perigee, till the hand of the well- kicked clock at the bottom of the room had travelled over the circumference of an hour.
At that precise moment the travellers ought to have set foot upon her if the unlucky asteroid had not made them deviate from their direction. The orb was exactly in the condition rigorously determined by the Cambridge Observatory. She was mathematically at her perigee, and at the zenith of the twenty-eighth parallel.
The moon does not describe a circle round the earth, but rather an ellipse, of which our earth occupies one of the foci; the consequence, therefore, is, that at certain times it approaches nearer to, and at others it recedes farther from, the earth; in astronomical language, it is at one time in apogee, at another in perigee.
"What is that?" asked Nicholl. "It is that you may lose your two other bets! Then we shall be sure not to be stopped on our journey!" The first of December had arrived! the fatal day! for, if the projectile were not discharged that very night at 10h. 48m. 40s. P.M., more than eighteen years must roll by before the moon would again present herself under the same conditions of zenith and perigee.
It stretches to a little less than the mean distance of the moon, so that though the two physical globes, the earth and the moon, are nearly 240,000 miles apart, the astral globes of these two bodies touch one another when the moon is in perigee, but not when she is in apogee.
Hurled on the 1st of December at thirteen minutes and twenty seconds to eleven in the evening, it was to get to the moon four days after its departure on the 5th of December at midnight precisely, at the very instant she would be at her perigee that is to say, nearest to the earth, or at exactly 86,410 leagues' distance.
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