United States or Falkland Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
All examples of change in lunar formations were, moreover, dismissed as illusory. The light contained in the work was, in short, a "dry light," not stimulating to the imagination. "A mixture of a lie," Bacon shrewdly remarks, "doth ever add pleasure." For many years, accordingly, Schmidt had the field of selenography almost to himself.
Of these 7,300,000 square miles, about 2,900,000 square miles are occupied by the gray, or dusky, expanses, called in lunar geography, or selenography, maria i.e., "seas."
We then discoursed of the circulation of the blood, the valves in the venæ lacteæ, the lymphatic vessels, the Copernican hypothesis, the nature of comets and new stars, the satellites of Jupiter, the oval shape of Saturn, the spots in the sun and its turning on its own axis, the inequalities and selenography of the moon, the several phases of Venus and Mercury, the improvement of telescopes, the grinding of glasses for that purpose, the weight of air, the possibility or impossibility of vacuities, and Nature's abhorrence thereof, the Torricellian experiment in quicksilver, the descent of heavy bodies and the degree of acceleration therein, and divers other things of like nature."
Inquiries stimulated by visible dependence, and aided by relatively close vicinity, have resulted in a wonderfully minute acquaintance with the features of the single lunar hemisphere open to our inspection. Selenography, in the modern sense, is little more than a hundred years old. It originated with the publication in 1791 of Schröter's Selenotopographische Fragmente.
You would always have to go down to that devils' wilderness to find out. "I'll try it, Mr. Rodan," he said. "Selenography that's one of my favorite subjects, sir!" David Lester burst out, making a gingerly leap across the horrible void of spherical sky stars in all directions except where the Moon's bulk hung. "Could I too?" His trembling mouth looked desperate.
Selenography, as a branch of observational astronomy, dates from the spring of 1609, when Galileo directed his "optic tube" to the moon, and in the following year, in the Sidereus Nuncius, or "the Intelligencer of the Stars," gave to an astonished and incredulous world an account of the unsuspected marvels it revealed.
As an encouragement to amateur observers who may be disposed to find out for themselves whether or not changes now take place in the moon, the following sentence from the introduction to Professor Pickering's chapter on Plato in the Harvard Observatory Annals, volume xxxii, will prove useful and interesting: "In reviewing the history of selenography, one must be impressed by the singular fact that, while most of the astronomers who have made a special study of the moon, such as Schroeter, Maedler, Schmidt, Webb, Neison, and Elger, have all believed that its surface was still subject to changes readily visible from the earth, the great majority of astronomers who have paid little attention to the subject have quite as strenuously denied the existence of such changes."
"Did not Herschel, in 1787, observe a great number of luminous points on the surface of the moon?" "Certainly; but without explaining the origin of these luminous points. Herschel himself did not thereby conclude the necessity of a lunar atmosphere." "Well answered," said Michel Ardan, complimenting his adversary; "I see that you are well up in selenography."
Hence, it may be said that selenography has taken a new and more promising departure, which, among other results, must lead to a more accurate knowledge of lunar topography, and settle possibly, ere long, the vexed question of change, without any residuum of doubt. Lunar photography as exemplified by the marvellous and beautiful pictures produced at the Lick Observatory under the auspices of Dr.
But though the ancients understood the character, temperament, and, in a word, moral qualities of the moon from a mythological point of view, the most learned amongst them remained very ignorant of selenography. Several astronomers, however, of ancient times discovered certain particulars now confirmed by science.
Word Of The Day