Part 9 (1/2)

13. THE MOON AND PLANETS.

_The Moon_.--Telescopic discoveries about the moon commence with Galileo's discovery that her surface has mountains and valleys, like the earth. He also found that, while she always turns the same face to us, there is periodically a slight twist to let us see a little round the eastern or western edge. This was called _libration_, and the explanation was clear when it was understood that in showing always the same face to us she makes one revolution a month on her axis _uniformly_, and that her revolution round the earth is not uniform.

Galileo said that the mountains on the moon showed greater differences of level than those on the earth. Shroter supported this opinion. W. Herschel opposed it. But Beer and Madler measured the heights of lunar mountains by their shadows, and found four of them over 20,000 feet above the surrounding plains.

Langrenus [1] was the first to do serious work on selenography, and named the lunar features after eminent men. Riccioli also made lunar charts. In 1692 Ca.s.sini made a chart of the full moon. Since then we have the charts of Schroter, Beer and Madler (1837), and of Schmidt, of Athens (1878); and, above all, the photographic atlas by Loewy and Puiseux.

The details of the moon's surface require for their discussion a whole book, like that of Neison or the one by Nasmyth and Carpenter. Here a few words must suffice. Mountain ranges like our Andes or Himalayas are rare. Instead of that, we see an immense number of circular cavities, with rugged edges and flat interior, often with a cone in the centre, reminding one of instantaneous photographs of the splash of a drop of water falling into a pool. Many of these are fifty or sixty miles across, some more. They are generally spoken of as resembling craters of volcanoes, active or extinct, on the earth. But some of those who have most fully studied the shapes of craters deny altogether their resemblance to the circular objects on the moon.

These so-called craters, in many parts, are seen to be closely grouped, especially in the snow-white parts of the moon. But there are great smooth dark s.p.a.ces, like the clear black ice on a pond, more free from craters, to which the equally inappropriate name of seas has been given. The most conspicuous crater, _Tycho_, is near the south pole. At full moon there are seen to radiate from Tycho numerous streaks of light, or ”rays,” cutting through all the mountain formations, and extending over fully half the lunar disc, like the star-shaped cracks made on a sheet of ice by a blow. Similar cracks radiate from other large craters. It must be mentioned that these white rays are well seen only in full light of the sun at full moon, just as the white snow in the creva.s.ses of a glacier is seen bright from a distance only when the sun is high, and disappears at sunset. Then there are deep, narrow, crooked ”rills” which may have been water-courses; also ”clefts” about half a mile wide, and often hundreds of miles long, like deep cracks in the surface going straight through mountain and valley.

The moon shares with the sun the advantage of being a good subject for photography, though the planets are not. This is owing to her larger apparent size, and the abundance of illumination. The consequence is that the finest details of the moon, as seen in the largest telescope in the world, may be reproduced at a cost within the reach of all.

No certain changes have ever been observed; but several suspicions have been expressed, especially as to the small crater _Linne_, in the _Mare Serenitatis_. It is now generally agreed that no certainty can be expected from drawings, and that for real evidence we must await the verdict of photography.

No trace of water or of an atmosphere has been found on the moon. It is possible that the temperature is too low. In any case, no displacement of a star by atmospheric refraction at occultation has been surely recorded. The moon seems to be dead.

The distance of the moon from the earth is just now the subject of re-measurement. The base line is from Greenwich to Cape of Good Hope, and the new feature introduced is the selection of a definite point on a crater (Mosting A), instead of the moon's edge, as the point whose distance is to be measured.

_The Inferior Planets_.--When the telescope was invented, the phases of Venus attracted much attention; but the brightness of this planet, and her proximity to the sun, as with Mercury also, seemed to be a bar to the discovery of markings by which the axis and period of rotation could be fixed. Ca.s.sini gave the rotation as twenty-three hours, by observing a bright spot on her surface. Shroter made it 23h. 21m. 19s.

This value was supported by others. In 1890 Schiaparelli[2] announced that Venus rotates, like our moon, once in one of her revolutions, and always directs the same face to the sun. This property has also been ascribed to Mercury; but in neither case has the evidence been generally accepted. Twenty-four hours is probably about the period of rotation for each of these planets.

Several observers have claimed to have seen a planet within the orbit of Mercury, either in transit over the sun's surface or during an eclipse. It has even been named _Vulcan_. These announcements would have received little attention but for the fact that the motion of Mercury has irregularities which have not been accounted for by known planets; and Le Verrier[3] has stated that an intra-Mercurial planet or ring of asteroids would account for the unexplained part of the motion of the line of apses of Mercury's...o...b..t amounting to 38” per century.

_Mars_.--The first study of the appearance of Mars by Miraldi led him to believe that there were changes proceeding in the two white caps which are seen at the planet's poles. W. Herschel attributed these caps to ice and snow, and the dates of his observations indicated a melting of these ice-caps in the Martian summer.

Schroter attributed the other markings on Mars to drifting clouds. But Beer and Madler, in 1830-39, identified the same dark spots as being always in the same place, though sometimes blurred by mist in the local winter. A spot sketched by Huyghens in 1672, one frequently seen by W. Herschel in 1783, another by Arago in 1813, and nearly all the markings recorded by Beer and Madler in 1830, were seen and drawn by F. Kaiser in Leyden during seventeen nights of the opposition of 1862 (_Ast. Nacht._, No. 1,468), whence he deduced the period of rotation to be 24h. 37m. 22s.,62--or one-tenth of a second less than the period deduced by R. A. Proctor from a drawing by Hooke in 1666.

It must be noted that, if the periods of rotation both of Mercury and Venus be about twenty-four hours, as seems probable, all the four planets nearest to the sun rotate in the same period, while the great planets rotate in about ten hours (Ura.n.u.s and Neptune being still indeterminate).

The general surface of Mars is a deep yellow; but there are dark grey or greenish patches. Sir John Herschel was the first to attribute the ruddy colour of Mars to its soil rather than to its atmosphere.

The observations of that keen-sighted observer Dawes led to the first good map of Mars, in 1869. In the 1877 opposition Schiaparelli revived interest in the planet by the discovery of ca.n.a.ls, uniformly about sixty miles wide, running generally on great circles, some of them being three or four thousand miles long. During the opposition of 1881-2 the same observer re-observed the ca.n.a.ls, and in twenty of them he found the ca.n.a.ls duplicated,[4] the second ca.n.a.l being always 200 to 400 miles distant from its fellow.

The existence of these ca.n.a.ls has been doubted. Mr. Lowell has now devoted years to the subject, has drawn them over and over again, and has photographed them; and accepts the explanation that they are artificial, and that vegetation grows on their banks. Thus is revived the old controversy between Whewell and Brewster as to the habitability of the planets. The new arguments are not yet generally accepted. Lowell believes he has, with the spectroscope, proved the existence of water on Mars.

One of the most unexpected and interesting of all telescopic discoveries took place in the opposition of 1877, when Mars was unusually near to the earth. The Was.h.i.+ngton Observatory had acquired the fine 26-inch refractor, and Asaph Hall searched for satellites, concealing the planet's disc to avoid the glare. On August 11th he had a suspicion of a satellite. This was confirmed on the 16th, and on the following night a second one was added. They are exceedingly faint, and can be seen only by the most powerful telescopes, and only at the times of opposition. Their diameters are estimated at six or seven miles. It was soon found that the first, Deimos, completes its...o...b..t in 30h. 18m. But the other, Phobos, at first was a puzzle, owing to its incredible velocity being unsuspected. Later it was found that the period of revolution was only 7h. 39m. 22s. Since the Martian day is twenty-four and a half hours, this leads to remarkable results.

Obviously the easterly motion of the satellite overwhelms the diurnal rotation of the planet, and Phobos must appear to the inhabitants, if they exist, to rise in the west and set in the east, showing two or even three full moons in a day, so that, sufficiently well for the ordinary purposes of life, the hour of the day can be told by its phases.

The discovery of these two satellites is, perhaps, the most interesting telescopic visual discovery made with the large telescopes of the last half century; photography having been the means of discovering all the other new satellites except Jupiter's fifth (in order of discovery).

[Ill.u.s.tration: JUPITER. From a drawing by E. M. Antoniadi, showing transit of a satellite's shadow, the belts, and the ”great red spot”

(_Monthly Notices_, R. A. S., vol. lix., pl. x.).]

_Jupiter._--Galileo's discovery of Jupiter's satellites was followed by the discovery of his belts. Zucchi and Torricelli seem to have seen them. Fontana, in 1633, reported three belts. In 1648 Grimaldi saw but two, and noticed that they lay parallel to the ecliptic. Dusky spots were also noticed as transient. Hooke[5] measured the motion of one in 1664. In 1665 Ca.s.sini, with a fine telescope, 35-feet focal length, observed many spots moving from east to west, whence he concluded that Jupiter rotates on an axis like the earth. He watched an unusually permanent spot during twenty-nine rotations, and fixed the period at 9h. 56m. Later he inferred that spots near the equator rotate quicker than those in higher lat.i.tudes (the same as Carrington found for the sun); and W. Herschel confirmed this in 1778-9.

Jupiter's rapid rotation ought, according to Newton's theory, to be accompanied by a great flattening at the poles. Ca.s.sini had noted an oval form in 1691. This was confirmed by La Hire, Romer, and Picard. Pound measured the ellipticity = 1/(13.25).