The Moon: A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features
Автор: Томас Ґвін Ельгер
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3.43The Moon A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features by Thomas Gwyn Elger -We know, both by tradition and published records, that from the earliest times the faint grey and light spots which diversify the face of our satellite excited the wonder and stimulated the curiosity of mankind, giving rise to suppositions more or less crude and erroneous as to their actual nature and significance. It is true that Anaxagoras, five centuries before our era, and probably other philosophers preceding him, -certainly Plutarch at a much later date-taught that these delicate markings and differences of tint, obvious to every one with normal vision, point to the existence of hills and valleys on her surface; the latter maintaining that the irregularities of outline presented by the "terminator," or line of demarcation between the illumined and unillumined portion of her spherical superficies, are due to mountains and their shadows; but more than fifteen centuries elapsed before the truth of this sagacious conjecture was unquestionably demonstrated. 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.
- АвторТомас Ґвін Ельгер
- ВидавництвоProject Gutenberg
- Рік видання2006 р.
- Оригінальна назваThe Moon: A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features
- Тип книгиЕлектронна книга