THE FULL MOON.
In another part of this book I told you something about the moon, which did not even pretend to be true. No body can go to the moon, although very many people have traveled more miles than the distance between the earth and its lunar companion. Any one who has sailed from New York to Liverpool and back forty times has gone over a greater distance than that from here to the moon, which is less than 240,000 miles away.
Many a sea-captain has sailed more miles than these. A ship came into New York Bay very recently that had sailed, in one voyage over 110,000 miles.
But we cannot visit the moon because there is no atmospheric air between that planet and the earth. If air existed in this vast space in which a balloon might float, and which a man might breathe, I think that some of us would manage to get to the moon before any one reaches the North Pole. The journey would be longer, but there would be no ice to block up the way.
But notwithstanding the fact that we cannot go to the moon, we know a great deal about that planet, especially as it affects the earth. And with the great telescopes that have been constructed, in late years, we can see much of the general configuration of that side of the moon which is turned towards us, and it appears very like the picture at the head of this article. Here we see depressions and elevations, and plain surfaces which may be, and probably are, mountains and beds of dried up oceans and vast plains, which, in all probability, are barren and desolate.
For scientific men feel quite certain that the moon has no atmosphere, and of course if there is no air, we have no reason to suppose that there is any life there.
But our principal interest in the moon relates to its effects upon ourselves, and our own planet, and therefore we should all understand it as we see and enjoy it from our stand-point.
We all know that sometimes the moon is full and bright, flooding the earth with its lovely light, and that, at other times it is quite dim, just a curved strip of light in the sky, and at still other times it seems to be absent altogether.
Though we have noticed all this, it is very probable indeed that some of us do not entirely understand these changes, and so I shall briefly explain them.
When we cannot see the moon at all, which is the case for two or three days every month, it is because the sun is not shining on that side of the moon which is turned to us. And we might as well remember that although the moon moves around the earth once every four weeks, it always turns the same side to us. We never have seen the other side, with telescopes, or in any other way.