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

lunar engineers. These two obscure points, and no doubt many others, could not be definitely settled until there had been direct communication with the moon.
    There was nothing more to be known with regard to the intensity of its light: the scientists knew that it is three hundred thousand times weaker than that of the sun, and that its heat has no appreciable effect on a thermometer. As for the phenomenon known as “ashy light,” it is explained by the effect of sunlight reflected from the earth to the moon, which seems to complete the lunar disk when it is seen in the shape of a crescent during its first and last phases.
    Such was the state of acquired knowledge concerning the earth’s satellite. The Gun Club proposed to augment it from every point of view: cosmographic, geological, political, and moral.
    * According to Wallaston, the diameter of Sirius must be twelve times that of the sun, or over ten million miles.
    * Some of these asteroids are so small that a man could run all the way around them in one day.
    * Approximately twenty-nine and a half days.
    * The height of Mont Blanc is 15,787 feet above sea level.

CHAPTER 6

WHAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE NOT TO KNOW AND WHAT IT IS NO LONGER PERMISSIBLE TO BELIEVE IN THE UNITED STATES
    O NE IMMEDIATE effect of Barbicane’s proposal was to focus attention on all astronomical facts relating to the moon. Everyone had been studying it assiduously. It seemed that the moon had appeared on the horizon for the first time, that no one had ever seen it in the sky before. It became fashionable; it was the celebrity of the day without seeming less modest, and took its place among the “stars” without showing any more pride. The newspapers revived old stories in which the “wolves’ sun” played a part; they recalled the influence that the ignorance of earlier times had attributed to it, they sang its praises in every way; they stopped just short of quoting its witty remarks. The whole country had a case of “moon fever.”
    The scientific journals dealt more specifically with matters concerning the Gun Club’s project. They published the letter from the Cambridge Observatory, commented on it, and gave it their unqualified approval.
    In short, it was no longer permissible for even the least learned American to be ignorant of a single one of the known facts about the moon, or for even the most narrow-minded old woman to go on entertaining superstitiousbeliefs about it. Science came to them in every form and penetrated through their eyes and ears. It was no longer possible to be an ignoramus—in astronomy.
    Till then, many people did not know how the distance from the earth to the moon had been measured. Experts took the opportunity to tell them that it had been measured by means of the moon’s parallax. If the word “parallax” seemed to surprise them, they were told that it was the angle formed by two straight lines projected to the moon from opposite ends of the earth’s radius. If they doubted the accuracy of this method, it was immediately proven to them that not only was this average distance 234,347 miles, but that the astronomers’ error was less than seventy miles.
    For the sake of those who were not familiar with the motions of the moon, the newspapers demonstrated daily that it has two distinct motions—rotation on its axis and revolution around the earth—which both take place in the same length of time: twenty-seven and a third days. *
    The movement of rotation is the one that makes day and night on the moon’s surface; but there is only one day and one night per lunar month, and each lasts 354⅓ hours. Fortunately, however, the side turned toward the earth is illuminated by it with an intensity equal to the light of fourteen moons. As for the other side, which is always invisible to us, it naturally has 354? hours of profound darkness mitigated only by “the pale glow that falls from the stars.” This is due solely to the fact that the motions of rotation