Fig. 74.—Lunar landscape with the Earth in the sky.
Yes, thanks to us, the inhabitants of the lunar hemisphere turned toward us are gratified by the sight of a splendid nocturnal torch, doubtless less white than our own despite the clouds with which the terrestrial globe is studded, and shaded in a tender tone of bluish emerald-green. The royal orb of their long nights, the Earth, gives them moonlight of unparalleled beauty, and we may say without false modesty that our presence in the lunar sky must produce marvelous and absolutely fairy-like effects.
Maybe, they envy us our globe, a dazzling dwelling-place whose splendor radiates through space; they see its greenish clarity varying with the extent of cloud that veils its seas and continents, and they observe its motion of rotation, by which all the countries of our planet are revealed in succession to its admirers.
We are talking of these pageants seen from the Moon, and of the inhabitants of our satellite as if they really existed. The sterile and desolate aspect of the lunar world, however, rather brings us to the conclusion that such inhabitants are non-existent, although we have no authorization for affirming this. That they have existed seems to me beyond doubt. The lunar volcanoes had a considerable activity, in an atmosphere that allowed the white volcanic ashes to be carried a long way by the winds, figuring round the craters the stellar rays that are still so striking. These cinders were spread over the soil, preserving all its asperities of outline, a little heaped up on the side to which they were impelled. The magnificent photographs recently made at the Paris Observatory by MM. Loewy and Puiseux are splendid evidence of these projections. In this era of planetary activity there were liquids and gases on the surface of the lunar globe, which appear subsequently to have been entirely absorbed. Now the teaching of our own planet is that Nature nowhere remains infertile, and that the production of Life is a law so general and so imperious that life develops at its own expense, sooner than abstain from developing. Accordingly, it is difficult to suppose that the lunar elements can have remained inactive, when only next door they exhibited such fecundity upon our globe. Yes, the Moon has been inhabited by beings doubtless very different from ourselves, and perhaps may still be, although this globe has run through the phases of its astral life more rapidly than our own, and the daughter is relatively older than the mother.
The duration of the life of the worlds appears to have been in proportion with their masses. The Moon cooled and mineralized more quickly than the Earth. Jupiter is still fluid.
The progress of optics brings us already very close to this neighboring province. 'Tis a pity we can not get a little nearer!
A telescopic magnification of 2,000 puts the Moon at 384,000⁄2,000 or 192 kilometers (some 120 miles) from our eye. Practically we can obtain no more, either from the most powerful instruments, or from photographic enlargements. Sometimes, exceptionally, enlargements of 3,000 can be used. This = 384,000⁄3,000 or 128 kilometers (some 80 miles). Undoubtedly, this is an admirable result, which does the greatest honor to human intelligence. But it is still too far to enable us to determine anything in regard to lunar life.
Any one who likes to be impressed by grand and magnificent sights may turn even a modest field-glass upon our luminous satellite, at about first quarter, when the relief of its surface, illuminated obliquely by the Sun, is at its greatest value. If you examine our neighbor world at this period, for choice at the hour of sunset, you will be astonished at its brilliancy and beauty. Its outlines, its laces, and embroideries, give the image of a jewel of shining silver, translucent, fluid, palpitating in the ether. Nothing could be more beautiful, nothing purer, and more celestial, than this lunar globe floating in the silence of space, and sending back to us as in some fairy dream the solar illumination that floods it. But yesterday I received the same impression, watching a great ring half standing out, and following the progress of the Sun as it mounted the lunar horizon to touch these silvered peaks. And I reflected that it is indeed inconceivable that 999,999⁄1,000,000 of the inhabitants of our planet should pass their lives without ever having attended to this pageant, nor to any of those others which the divine Urania scatters so profusely beneath the wondering gaze of the observers of the Heavens.