The Moon: A Popular Treatise

by Garrett Putman Serviss

“That is not much. I am sure I can see people at that distance.”

“Oh, yes, but the distinctness of view would be nothing like so great as if you were looking at the same objects on the earth. Still, if we could obviate the atmospheric and other difficulties, a magnifying power of one million would certainly enable us to discover the works of the moon’s inhabitants—their houses, their fields, their plantations, their great establishments of art and industry. But I assure you that a telescope of such power is a mere dream. It could never be constructed without some fundamentally new and unheard-of discovery in optics. We shall do better to turn once more to our photographs which, at least, have no deceptions. Dropping No. 12, we shall take up No. 13, which brings us practically to the Full Moon phase. The moon’s age at the time this photograph was made was nearly fourteen and one-half days. You see that its whole eastward face is now lying in the sunlight. The march of day across its surface has been completed, and on the western edge of the moon the sun is about to set, while on the eastern edge it is just rising. Among the new things that have come into view is a conspicuous dark oval, shaped like Plato, but very much larger, near the eastern edge. This is a walled plain named Grimaldi, and it enjoys the distinction of being the darkest on the moon. Near it on the northeast and consequently closer to the limb is another walled plain, which I promised some time ago to point out to you because it bears the name of the astronomer Riccioli, the great bestower of names on the moon, and upon whose lack of imagination you have so severely commented. But, as you have already learned, the time of Full Moon is not the best for studying the mountains and rings, because then the light strikes too nearly vertical upon them and they cast no shadows. But it is the best time for seeing the broad general features of the lunar surface. Turn the picture upside down again, thus bringing the disk into its natural position as seen with the naked eye, and this photograph shows the moon very much as it appears with a small pocket telescope, or with a powerful binocular. The new prism binoculars that have come into use within the past few years are excellent for general views of the moon. Their defining powers are superb, and one who has never seen the moon with such a glass is always greatly surprised and delighted with the view which it affords. You see now that Tycho forms a blazing brooch, resting on the Maiden’s neck, while its rays extend across her profile, and the long one lying over the Mare Serenitatis bears some resemblance to a pin displayed in her hair, with the crater ring, Menelaus, glittering at its lower end. The other bright point, to the left of Menelaus (we will henceforth keep the picture reversed), is a ring mountain named Manilius. After the detailed study which we have given to the various ‘seas’ and formations you should be able to recognize them with the picture in this position, and I wish that you should do so because, as I have just remarked, this is the position of the Full Moon as it is always seen with the naked eye or with a simple binocular, for the latter does not reverse it, as does a telescope. The western edge is now at the right hand, and the north at the top. All the mares are clearly visible. On the right the Mare Crisium, the Mare Fœcunditatis, the Mare Nectaris and the Mare Tranquillitatis; in the center, above, the Mare Serenitatis; on the left the Mare Imbrium, the Mare Vaporum, the Mare Nubium, the Mare Humorum, and the Oceanus Procellarum. The two bright spots on the right, lower than the Mare Fœcunditatis, are Petavius and a neighboring ring. Vendelinus forms a less brilliant spot at the western edge of an extension of the Mare Fœcunditatis, and Langrenus is distinctly seen on the western shore of the main body of that mare. Proclus and the remarkable diamond of the ‘Marsh of a Dream’ are very plain just under the large oval of the Mare Crisium. The mountains and cliffs encircling the Mare Imbrium on the west, north, and east you will recognize at a glance. The dark Plato is conspicuous in the lighter mountainous area north of this ‘sea,’ and the semicircle of the ‘Bay of Rainbows’ is sharply defined. Farther north is the long, dark Mare Frigoris, whose eastern end merges into the broad Oceanus Procellarum. Aristarchus appears as a very bright point in this ‘ocean,’ and far to the right of Aristarchus, toward the center of the disk, Copernicus, with its splatter of irregular rays, is conspicuous. Following the eastern limb round toward the south we see again the dark oval of Grimaldi, beyond which the bright mountainous region broadens as we approach the South Pole.

No. 13. September 5, 1903; Moon’s Age 14.40 Days.

“There is just one other thing on which I should like to dwell a little while we have the Full Moon before us. I have already referred to it once or twice—I mean the system of bright rays or bands radiating from Tycho. These rays, as I have told you, are among the greatest mysteries of the moon. Their appearance is so singular and, if I may so describe it, unnatural, that when the first photographs of the Full Moon were published, some persons actually thought that they were being imposed upon. They imagined that the photographer had indulged in a practical joke, by photographing a peeled orange and dubbing it ‘the moon.’ The mysterious rays do not start from the central mountain of Tycho, nor even from the ring itself, but from a considerable distance outside the ring. Nevertheless, Tycho is manifestly the center from which they arise. It looks as though some irresistible force had been focused at that point—a force that split the moon along a hundred radiating lines. This is, in substance, the theory of the English selenographer Nasmyth. He supposed that, the lunar globe being burst by internal stress, molten lava welled up and filled the cracks. After solidifying this lava possessed a lighter color and greater reflecting power than its surroundings and thus gave rise to the appearance of long bands.”

“Really, your moon history seems to me to be made up of extremely tragical chapters. But I am content as long as you put all these terrific events sufficiently far in the past to leave time for the moon to have enjoyed a different kind of history since they occurred.”

“But,” I said, “even if I grant what you wish, you must admit that the greatest tragedy of all succeeded.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean simply that your imagined lunar age of gold, when the moon was full of animated existences and beautiful scenes, has also become a thing of the past; and what geological cataclysm can be compared in tragic intensity with the disappearance of a world of life?”

“But that disappearance was gradual, was it not?”