THE ROMANCE OF THE MOON.
A spectator endowed with infinite power of sight, and placed at the
unknown centre round which gravitates the universe, would have seen
myriads of atoms filling all space during the chaotic epoch of creation.
But by degrees, as centuries went on, a change took place; a law of
gravitation manifested itself which the wandering atoms obeyed; these
atoms, combined chemically according to their affinities, formed
themselves into molecules, and made those nebulous masses with which the
depths of the heavens are strewed.
These masses were immediately animated by a movement of rotation round
their central point. This centre, made of vague molecules, began to turn
on itself whilst progressively condensing; then, following the immutable
laws of mechanics, in proportion as its volume became diminished by
condensation its movement of rotation was accelerated, and these two
effects persisting, there resulted a principal planet, the centre of the
nebulous mass.
By watching attentively the spectator would then have seen other
molecules in the mass behave like the central planet, and condense in
the same manner by a movement of progressively-accelerated rotation, and
gravitate round it under the form of innumerable stars. The nebulae, of
which astronomers count nearly 5,000 at present, were formed.
Amongst these 5,000 nebulae there is one that men have called the Milky
Way, and which contains eighteen millions of stars, each of which has
become the centre of a solar world.
If the spectator had then specially examined amongst these eighteen
millions of stars one of the most modest and least brilliant, a star of
the fourth order, the one that proudly named itself the sun, all the
phenomena to which the formation of the universe is due would have
successively taken place under his eyes.
In fact, he would have perceived this sun still in its gaseous state,
and composed of mobile molecules; he would have perceived it turning on
its own axis to finish its work of concentration. This movement,
faithful to the laws of mechanics, would have been accelerated by the
diminution of volume, and a time would have come when the centrifugal
force would have overpowered the centripetal, which causes the molecules
all to tend towards the centre.
Then another phenomenon would have passed before the eyes of the
spectator, and the molecules situated in the plane of the equator would
have formed several concentric rings like that of Saturn round the sun.
In their turn these rings of cosmic matter, seized with a movement of
rotation round the central mass, would have been broken up into
secondary nebulae--that is to say, into planets.
If the spectator had then concentrated all his attention on these
planets he would have seen them behave exactly like the sun and give
birth to one or more cosmic rings, origin of those secondary bodies
which we call satellites.
Thus in going up from the atom to the molecule, from the molecule to the
nebulae, and from the nebulae to the principal star, from the principal
star to the sun, from the sun to the planet, and from the planet to the
satellite, we have the whole series of transformations undergone by the
celestial powers from the first days of the universe.
The sun seems lost amidst the immensities of the stellar universe, and
yet it is related, by actual theories of science, to the nebula of the
Milky Way. Centre of a world, and small as it appears amidst the
ethereal regions, it is still enormous, for its size is 1,400,000 times
that of the earth. Around it gravitate eight planets, struck off from
its own mass in the first days of creation. These are, in proceeding
from the nearest to the most distant, Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Between Mars and Jupiter circulate
regularly other smaller bodies, the wandering _débris_, perhaps, of a
star broken up into thousands of pieces, of which the telescope has
discovered eighty-two at present. Some of these asteroids are so small
that they could be walked round in a single day by going at a gymnastic
pace.
Of these attendant bodies which the sun maintains in their elliptical
orbit by the great law of gravitation, some possess satellites of their
own. Uranus has eight, Saturn eight, Jupiter four, Neptune three
perhaps, and the Earth one; this latter, one of the least important of
the solar world, is called the Moon, and it is that one that the
enterprising genius of the Americans means to conquer.
The Queen of Night, from her relative proximity and the spectacle
rapidly renewed of her different phases, at first divided the attention
of the inhabitants of the earth with the sun; but the sun tires the
eyesight, and the splendour of its light forces its admirers to lower
their eyes.
The blonde Phoebe, more humane, graciously allows herself to be seen in
her modest grace; she is gentle to the eye, not ambitious, and yet she
sometimes eclipses her brother the radiant Apollo, without ever being
eclipsed by him. The Mahommedans understood what gratitude they owed to
this faithful friend of the earth, and they ruled their months at 29-1/2
days on her revolution.
The first people of the world dedicated particular worship to this
chaste goddess. The Egyptians called her Isis, the Phoenicians Astarte,
the Greeks Phoebe, daughter of Jupiter and Latona, and they explained
her eclipses by the mysterious visits of Diana and the handsome
Endymion. The mythological legend relates that the Nemean lion traversed
the country of the moon before its apparition upon earth, and the poet
Agesianax, quoted by Plutarch, celebrated in his sweet lines its soft
eyes, charming nose, and admirable mouth, formed by the luminous parts
of the adorable Selene.
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. Though the Arcadians pretended
they had inhabited the earth at an epoch before the moon existed, though
Simplicius believed her immovable and fastened to the crystal vault,
though Tacitus looked upon her as a fragment broken off from the solar
orbit, and Clearch, the disciple of Aristotle, made of her a polished
mirror upon which were reflected the images of the ocean--though, in
short, others only saw in her a mass of vapours exhaled by the earth, or
a globe half fire and half ice that turned on itself, other _savants_,
by means of wise observations and without optical instruments, suspected
most of the laws that govern the Queen of Night.
Thus Thales of Miletus, B.C. 460, gave out the opinion that the moon was
lighted up by the sun. Aristarchus of Samos gave the right explanation
of her phases. Cleomenus taught that she shone by reflected light.
Berose the Chaldean discovered that the duration of her movement of
rotation was equal to that of her movement of revolution, and he thus
explained why the moon always presented the same side. Lastly,
Hipparchus, 200 years before the Christian era, discovered some
inequalities in the apparent movements of the earth's satellite.
These different observations were afterwards confirmed, and other
astronomers profited by them. Ptolemy in the second century, and the
Arabian Aboul Wefa in the tenth, completed the remarks of Hipparchus on
the inequalities that the moon undergoes whilst following the undulating
line of its orbit under the action of the sun. Then Copernicus, in the
fifteenth century, and Tycho Brahe, in the sixteenth, completely exposed
the system of the world and the part that the moon plays amongst the
celestial bodies.
At that epoch her movements were pretty well known, but very little of
her physical constitution was known. It was then that Galileo explained
the phenomena of light produced in certain phases by the existence of
mountains, to which he gave an average height of 27,000 feet.
After him, Hevelius, an astronomer of Dantzig, lowered the highest
altitudes to 15,000 feet; but his contemporary, Riccioli, brought them
up again to 21,000 feet.
Herschel, at the end of the eighteenth century, armed with a powerful
telescope, considerably reduced the preceding measurements. He gave a
height of 11,400 feet to the highest mountains, and brought down the
average of different heights to little more than 2,400 feet. But
Herschel was mistaken too, and the observations of Schroeter, Louville,
Halley, Nasmyth, Bianchini, Pastorff, Lohrman, Gruithuysen, and
especially the patient studies of MM. Boeer and Moedler, were necessary
to definitely resolve the question. Thanks to these _savants_, the
elevation of the mountains of the moon is now perfectly known. Boeer and
Moedler measured 1,905 different elevations, of which six exceed 15,000
feet and twenty-two exceed 14,400 feet. Their highest summit towers to a
height of 22,606 feet above the surface of the lunar disc.
At the same time the survey of the moon was being completed; she
appeared riddled with craters, and her essentially volcanic nature was
affirmed by each observation. From the absence of refraction in the rays
of the planets occulted by her it is concluded that she can have no
atmosphere. This absence of air entails absence of water; it therefore
became manifest that the Selenites, in order to live under such
conditions, must have a special organisation, and differ singularly from
the inhabitants of the earth.
Lastly, thanks to new methods, more perfected instruments searched the
moon without intermission, leaving not a point of her surface
unexplored, and yet her diameter measures 2,150 miles; her surface is
one-thirteenth of the surface of the globe, and her volume
one-forty-ninth of the volume of the terrestrial spheroid; but none of
her secrets could escape the astronomers' eyes, and these clever
_savants_ carried their wonderful observations still further.
Thus they remarked that when the moon was at her full the disc appeared
in certain places striped with white lines, and during her phases
striped with black lines. By prosecuting the study of these with greater
precision they succeeded in making out the exact nature of these lines.
They are long and narrow furrows sunk between parallel ridges, bordering
generally upon the edges of the craters; their length varied from ten to
one hundred miles, and their width was about 1,600 yards. Astronomers
called them furrows, and that was all they could do; they could not
ascertain whether they were the dried-up beds of ancient rivers or not.
The Americans hope, some day or other, to determine this geological
question. They also undertake to reconnoitre the series of parallel
ramparts discovered on the surface of the moon by Gruithuysen, a learned
professor of Munich, who considered them to be a system of elevated
fortifications raised by Selenite engineers. These two still obscure
points, and doubtless many others, can only be definitely settled by
direct communication with the moon.
As to the intensity of her light there is nothing more to be learnt; it
is 300,000 times weaker than that of the sun, and its heat has no
appreciable action upon thermometers; as to the phenomenon known as the
"ashy light," it is naturally explained by the effect of the sun's rays
transmitted from the earth to the moon, and which seem to complete the
lunar disc when it presents a crescent form during its first and last
phases.
Such was the state of knowledge acquired respecting the earth's
satellite which the Gun Club undertook to perfect under all its aspects,
cosmographical, geographical, geological, political, and moral.