Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1880-07-23
The Mountains Of the Moon,

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chirography of Mile B.
The Mountains Of the Moon,
AND THE OTHER WONDERS REVEALED IN OUR
SATELLITE by THE TELESCOPE.
When one looks at the moon through pow
erful telescope furnished with a prism eye
piece, he seems to be suspended in mid-air
and looking down upon the lunar plains and
mountains from an enormous height. The
falling away of the surface toward the edges
of the great ball sometimes produces the SEN
sation that is experienced in standing on the
brink of giddy precipice. II the magnify
ing power used is 800 diameters, the effect is
about the same as if the observer were in
balloon 500 miles above the surface Of the
moon. Below him lie mountains greater than
Mont Blanc and Chimborazo, looking no larg-
er than pebbles. Ancient sea-bottoms are
spread beneath him like smooth floors dotted
here and there with elevations that may once
have been islands, and surrounded by table
lands, plains and mountain chains that show
where the old seacoast was fiat and marshy,
where it was full of harbors, and where it was
iron-bound and perilous. Great naked plains
stretch out in various directions as smooth as
our prairies, and in other places there are
reaches of hilly country, and then tremendous
mountain masses. The great typographical
features remain, as in the days when the
moon was young and full Of life like the
earth but the coasts are silent as the noun
tain peaks, the seas are empty, the fruitful
soil is gone, ali that ancient, teemng life hos
vanished, and the whole land is void of air
1t is only the rocky skeleton of dead world,
and picture of what our earth will be hun
dreds of millions of years hence.
With a good three-inch telescope, and a lit
tie practice in the management of the magni-
flying powers, one may easily see all the IA
nous mountains of the moon, and most of the
strange-looking objects that have at different
times been taken for Notifications, roads, and
other works of man. There are a number of
excellent maps of the moon, by whose aid
every conspicuous object may be recognized.
The point of greatest interest to the observer
is the long, jagged line, called the Termination,
that marks the sharp division between day
and night. If you watch that line for an
hour or two, you will be astonished at the
changes that have taken place under your eye.
You will see the sunshine creeping down the
steep inner side of ringed mountain, until
the floor of the vast basin, which had before
been perfectly black, looking like q hole right
through the moon, is reached and lighted up,
while the rocky hanks of the central peak, or
cluster of peaks, come into view, and begin
to cast long, spiry shadows over the crater
ded by the sunlight, has been visible for an
hour, shining out of the dense obscurity that
covers the region about 1t which is yet stepped
in night, like a little island lying off a sunny
coast gradually swings into view, and the line
of sunshine goes sweeping up its craggy sides,
chasing the shadows and revealing rocky
spires and precipitous gorges deeper than the
valley of the Mer de Glace.
The vast dark plains, which were formerly
l. 4 - Il, L.,
astronomers SEQ only the bottoms of seas
whose waters disappeared ages ago, retain
their old romantic names. There is the Ocean
of Storms, covering a vast region in the east
ern hemisphere. With its equatorial situa
ton, and surrounded by some of the most
gigantic mountains in the moon, it may have
been before its waters were stolen away, as
tempestuous as its name implies. On the
south of the Ocean of Storms projects large
bay of a remarkably green hue, which is call
ed the Sea of Moisture, while on the north
the ocean runs into the narrow Bay of Dew.
Then there is the Sea of Showers, the largest
of the moons seas or sea bottoms. Between
the Sea of Showers and that brilliant portion
of the moon called the Land of Hoar Frost,
lies the Bay of Rainbows which, as the cele-
brated observers Beer and Nader thought,
furnishes the most magnificent landscape in
the moon. 1t is surrounded by lofty, shining
cliffs. In the centre of the moon are the Sea
of Vapors and the Bay of Tides. In the
north are Plato, or the Greater Black Lake,
the Sea of Cold and the Marsh Of Sleep, the
latter being remarkable for its reddish hue.
In the east are the Sea of Serenity, the Sea
of Tranquility, the Sea of Fertility, the Sea
of Nectar, and the dark Crisian Sea. The
last named, Judging from its unusual depres-
sion, was probably the deepest of all the lunar
seas, although its greatest length is only about
$50 miles.
Around all these seas cluster ringed noun
tains craters and mountain ranges, whose
shadows are thrown upon their level surfaces,
varying in length and shape and number with
every hour. The whole southern quarter of
the moon is occupied by the great mountain
region that has the tremendous crater Tycho
for its centre Here the amateur telescOpist
may spend hours among the glttering peaks.
1t is like looking down into the heart of the
Adrondacks, with the mouptains increased
ten-fold in magnitude aud thousand-fold in
number. The mountain wall that surrounds
Tycho is a perfect ring, fifty-four miles in
diameter and three miles high. Exactly in
the centre of the great flat floor, enclosed
| within the ring, rises mountain peak mile
in height that shines brilliantly in the sunlight
In a good three-inch telescope, Tycho is an
| object of surprising beauty and ever-varying
interest, as the sunshine creeps up its outer
wall, leaps down the terraced slope of the op-
posite side of the ring and, sliding across the
| broad, level floor, climbs the central peak and
throws its long-pOinted shadow clear across
the crater. For hundreds of miles on every
side of Tycho the whole surface of the moon
is broken and upheaved into jagged noun
| tain masses, in which are many peaks loftier
than the highest Alps and some that equal
the mightest of the Andes. The spectacle of
the sunrise upon these mountains is magnih-
cent beyond description.
Some of the highest mountains in the moon
! lie along the edge of the disk, and are seen as
in profile against the sky. Such are the Doer-
fel mountains and the Leibnitz range south Of
| Tycho, which rival our Himalayas in height.
In the telescope they give the edge of the
moon a broken or scallOped appearance.
These are but few of the wonderful OBJ
iects in our satellite that are familiar TO as
tronomers. Any one who is not an astrono-
mer may spend many pleasurable hours in
studying them with the aid of a small tele-
scope.-N. y. Sun.