The record-union., 1891-04-26
MARS AND HIS MOONS.
Curious and Interesting Facts About
the Fiery Planet

Gently, a Washington correspondent says,
speaks of those two Interesting satellites
as being each about the size of forty-acre
lot. Revolving about the planet like two
pretty little golden shuttles, one of them
presents the phenomenon of travelling
round more than three times as fast as
Mars himself does. Thus is produced a
very surprising appearance of things
from the point of view of the Martian in
habitants, who see the rapidly moving
moon seemingly rising in the west and
setting in the east, while its companion,
in reality circling in the same direction
with it at speed comparatively slow,
rises in the east and sets in the west.
In this way both moons are seen in the
heavens ut once, one going one way and
the other the ether. They are doubtless
dead spheres, like the one that pursues
its endless journey around the earth, and
are not supposed to be made of green
| cheese.
1t is an astonishing fact that these two
moons of Mars, SO recently discovered,
were referred to with much accuracy of
description by both Voltaire and Dean
swift IN their satirical writings, thus an
tlclpatlng astronomical science, at which
their sarcasm were aimed, by century.
| 1t was all guess on their part, but assur
| edly one OF the most remarkably gueSSeS
ever made. Describing his voyage to La
| puta, which was inhabited by a people
| V,
| Gulliver says: "They have likewise dis
covered two lesser or satellites which re-
yolve about Mars. whereof the innermoSt
| is distant from the planet exactly three of
! its diameters and the outermost five of
the diameters of the planet: the former re-
| wolves in the space of 10 hours, and the
| latter in 2l4 hours"
Now the fact is, as discovered only the
other day, that Mars really has two
moons, an inner one and an outer one.
The diameter of Mars being little over
1900 miles, Gulliver's estimate for the
distance Of the inner moon from the
planet was about l2,000 miles, whereas it
is actually 10000 miles away. For the
outer moon Gulliver gives 10000 miles as
the distance, which is really only Is, 200
miles. So he was only 1000 miles off the
fact as to one moon and 5000 as the other.
| GulliVer mentions the time Of revolution
for the inner moon as seven and one-half
hours; it is actually ten hours.
The time for the outer moon is set
down by the imaginary traveller at 2lt
hours; in fact, little over thirty hours.
Pretty good for guess at moons that
never offered to human observers until a
century later any evidence of their eX
| istence.
Voltaire described the journey of Mi
cromegas, an inhabitant of Sirius, who
left the great Dog Star for visit to the
solar system. He travelled" wrote the
artist, ''about 100, ,o00, 900 of leagues after
leaving Jupiter. Coasting by Mars he
saw two moons circling about the planet,
which have hitherto escaped astronomers
upon the earth.''
Professor Hall has named his moons
Delmos and Phobos, after the attendants
of Mars, who are spoken of in Book XIV.
of Homer's "Iliad,' as helping to accou-
ter the God Of War for conflict:
He spa&e and summoned Fear and Flight to
yoke
His steeds and put his glorious armor on.
Prof. Hall says he has little doubt thai
Mars is neutrality-suspicious. by human
beings like ourselves. Conditions there
are suitable to such life, and strongly re-
semb1e those found on the earth. Its
more eccentric orbit takes it at times in
its journey around the sun farther away
from that great source of heat, so that its
winters must be more severe: but cold is
modified by atmosphere, and it is known
that Mars has an atmosphere, because
| clouds are frequently seen obscuring its
surface. The planet, the diameter of
which is about one-half that of the earth,
is about equally divided as to its area be-
tween land and water. Its poles are
capped with ice and snow, and these
white caps, plainly visible through the
telescope, increase in size in winter and
diminish in the Martian summer.
Prof. Hall has no difficulty in seeing
through the mighty telescope at the OBJ
servatory thewonderful Canals mapped
out by Schlaparelli, the Milan astrono-
mer, on the surface of Mars. These ca
mails, so-called because they don't look
like anything else in particular, and be-
cause they seem invariably to connect sea
with sea, intersecting every which way,
must be several miles in width, as well
as thousands of miles in length. Whether
they are great roads, canals, bridges, or
any other sort of public works, there is
| certainly nothing approaching them in
this world. But Professor Hall does not
think that they are artificial at all. Though
entirely at loss to explain them, he sup
| poses that they are natural markings on
the planet.
The question whether other planets are
| inhabited is always an interesting one.
| 1t is certain that the four greater outer
ones--Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Nep-
| tune-cannot support animal life. Their
! density is small and their consistency
| more or less LIQUID and gaseous. Jupi-
ter, biggest of the planets, the diameter of
which is more than ten times that Of the
earth, is sun not yet quite extinguished
and even now giving out heat.
From time to time spot appears on it's
surface, which is black hole in the midst
of the fire, big enough to drop the earth
into. Saturn is hot. too, while Neptune
and Uranus are SO far off that not much
can be ascertained about them beyond the
fact that Uranus has four moons and Nep-
| tune one. There may be life on Venus
and Mercury, though it must be warm,
! inasmuch as Venus is third nearer the
sun than the earth and Mercury is not
| half SO far away.
| All these planets, together with the sun,
| around which they revolve, are travelling
with a velocity inconceivable directly
| north toward the constellation Hercules.
Doubtless the solar system on this mighty
! journey is pursuing the path of vast
orbit around some central point un-
known. Once it was thought that this
point was Sirius, and again that it was
the Alcyone in the Pleiades; but neither
is true. Our sun and its system are but
small affair altogether, anyway. What
we call the orb of day is only one-eighth
| of the size of Sirius. And even this latter
giant sun is far surpassed in magnitude
| by ever so many other suns that are
wheeling through the heavens with their
attendant constellation in plain sight.
To make them more beautiful, these suns
are of different colors. Vega, in the con-
| stellation of the Lyre, has huge sun of
an exquisite blue tint, Sirius is white,
and Alpha-one of the several gigantic
suns in Orion-is red.
| Smarter Than His Father.
Going to Springfield the other day there