From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne Read Free Book Online

disintegrating and breaking up into secondary masses, i.e., into planets.
    If the observer had watched these planets he would have seen them acting exactly like the sun and giving birth to one or more cosmic rings. This was the origin of those minor bodies known as satellites.
    Thus, in going from the atom to the molecule, from themolecule to the nebulous mass, from the nebulous mass to the nebula, from the nebula 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 heavenly bodies since the first days of the world.
    The sun seems lost in the immensities of the stellar world, and yet current scientific theory tells us that it is part of the Milky Way. It is the center of a world, and, however small it may seem in the vast reaches of space, it is actually enormous, for its size is 1,400,000 times greater than that of the earth. Around it gravitate the eight planets that came from its entrails at the beginning of creation. In order of nearness to the sun, they are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. In addition, moving in regular orbits between Mars and Jupiter, there are smaller bodies which may be the debris of a larger body broken into thousands of pieces. The telescope has revealed ninety-seven of them so far. *
    Some of these attendants of the sun, held in their elliptical orbits by the great law of gravitation, have their own satellites. Uranus and Saturn have eight each, Jupiter has four, Neptune may have three, the earth has one. The latter, one of the smallest in the solar system, is called the moon, and it was the objective that the bold American spirit had set out to conquer.
    Because of its relative nearness and the rapidly changing spectacle of its various phases, the moon shared man’s attention with the sun from the very beginning. Butthe sun is tiring to the eyes, and the splendor of its light soon forces those who look at it to avert their gaze.
    Pale Phoebe, however, is more humane; she graciously lets herself be seen in all her modest charm; she is unassuming and gentle to the eye, and yet she sometimes takes the liberty of eclipsing her brother, the radiant Apollo, without ever being eclipsed by him. Realizing the debt of gratitude they owed to this faithful friend of the earth, the Mohammedans established their month in accordance with her revolution. *
    The ancient nations worshiped that chaste goddess. The Egyptians called her Isis, the Phoenicians Astarte; the Greeks worshiped her under the name of Phoebe, daughter of Leto and Zeus, and they explained her eclipses by her mysterious visits to the handsome Endymion. Mythology tells us that the Nemean lion roamed the moon before appearing on earth, and the poet Agesianax, quoted by Plutarch, celebrated in his verses the gentle eyes, charming nose, and gracious mouth formed by the bright parts of the adorable Selene.
    Although the ancients had a good understanding of the character, temperament, and general moral qualities of the moon from a mythological point of view, even the most learned of them were extremely ignorant of its physical nature.
    Some ancient astronomers, however, discovered certain things about the moon that have been confirmed by modern science. While the Arcadians claimed to have lived on the earth at a time when the moon did not yet exist, while Tatius regarded it as a fragment of the sun, while Aristotle’s disciple Clearchus held it to be a smooth mirror in which images of the ocean were reflected, andwhile others saw it only as a mass of vapor given off by the earth or a revolving globe that was half fire and half ice, a few learned men, by means of shrewd observations, lacking optical instruments, surmised most of the laws that govern it.
    Thus Thales of Miletus, five hundred years before the birth of Christ, voiced the opinion that the moon was illuminated by the sun.