The Children's Book of Stars

ight away from her, but still went on circling round with the motion it had inherited from her. As the ages passed on both the earth and this fragment, which had been very hot, cooled down, and i

It is-as, of course, you have guessed-the moon. The moon is the nearest body to us in all space, and so vast is the distance that separates us from the stars that we speak as if she were not very far off, yet compared with the size of the earth the space lying between us and her is very grea

several, but there is not one to compare with our moon. Which would you prefer if you had the choice, three or four small moons,

earth, so perhaps there may be some peop

pale, pure light, in vivid contrast with the fiery yellow rays of the sun, yet she is dead and lifeless and still. We can examine her surface with the telescope, and see it all very plainly. Even with a large opera-glass those markings which, to the naked eye, seem to be like a queer distorted face are changed, and show up as the shadows of great m

water, for all water would evaporate and vanish at once. Imagine the world deprived of air; then the sun's rays would fall with such fierceness that even the strongest tropical sun we know would be as nothing in comparison with it, and every green thing would shrivel up and die; this scorching sun would shine out of a black sky in which the stars would all be visible in the daytime, not hidden by the soft blue veil of air, as they are now. At night the instant the sun disappeared below the horizon black d

ervatory.

the peak, so that, as the mountain ceases vomiting and the lava cools down, the ring hardens and forms a circular ridge. The craters on the moon are immense, not only in proportion to her size, but immense even according to our ideas on the earth. One of the largest craters in our own world is in Japan, and this measures seven miles across, while in the moon craters of fifty, six

. Now it has long been quiet. Nothing changes there; even the forces that are always at work on the earth-namely, damp and mould and water-altering the surface and breaking up the rocks, do not act there, where there is no moisture of any sort. So far as we can see, the purpo

cent moon it looks as if it were encircling the rest; some people call it, 'seeing the old moon in the new moon's arms.' I don't know if you would guess why it is we can see the dark part then, or how it is lighted up. It is by reason of our own shining, for we give light to the moon, as she does to us. The sun's rays strike on the earth, and are reflected on to the moon, so that the moon is lighted by earthshine as we are lighted by moonshine, and it is thes

tween the lamp and the earth-ball. You will see that the side turned to the earth-ball is dark, but if you move the moon to one side of the earth, then from the earth half of it appears light and half dark; if you put it right aw

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ne of the proofs that the earth is round too. But there is another kind of eclipse-the eclipse of the sun; and this is caused by the moon herself. For when she is nearest to the sun, at new moon-that is to say, when her dark side is toward us, and she happens to get exactly between us and the sun-she shuts out the face of the sun from us; for though she is tiny compared with him, she is so much nearer to us that

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lped by the sun. The reason of this is that the moon is so near to the earth that, though her pull is a comparatively small one, it is very strongly felt. She cannot displace the actual surface to any great extent, as it is so solid; but when it comes to the water she can and does displace that, so that the water rises up in answer to her pull, and as the earth turns round the raised-up water lags behind, reaching backward toward the moon, and is drawn up on the beach, and makes high tide. But it is stopped there, and meantime, by reason o

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ll and new moon, then the tides are highest, and are called spring tides; but when they pull in d