From the Earth to the Moon

One would have thought that the moon had just appeared for the first time, and that no one had ever before caught a glimpse of her in the heavens. The papers revived all the old anecdotes in wh

which touched upon the enterprise of the Gun Club. The letter of the Observatory

rallax of the moon. The term parallax proving “caviare to the general,” they further explained that it meant the angle formed by the inclination of two straight lines drawn from either extremity of the earth’s radius to the moon. On doubt

t motions, the first being that of rotation upon her axis, the second being that of revolution round the eart

nd fifty-four and one-third hours. But, happily for her, the face turned toward the terrestrial globe is illuminated by it with an intensity equal to that of fourteen moons. As to th

h they answered, “Go into your dining-room, and walk round the table in such a way as to always keep your face turned toward the center; by the time you will have achieved one complete round you will have completed on

is necessary to add that, in consequence of certain fluctuations of north and south, and of west and e

ars, may be considered as one vast dial-plate, upon which the moon travels, indicating the true time to all the inhabitants of the earth; that it is during this movement that the Queen of Night exhibits her different phases; that the moon is full when she is in opposition with the sun, that is when the three bodi

he globe in which the moon passes the zenith, that is, the point directly over the head of the spectator, are of necessity comprised between the twenty-eighth parallels and the equator. Hence the importance of the advice to try the experiment upon some point of

is path is a re-entering curve, not a perfect circle, but an ellipse, of which the earth occupies one of the foci. It was also

of which no one could decently profess ignorance. Still, while these principles were b

and became confined within her circle of attraction. These drawing-room astronomers professed to explain the charred aspect of the moon — a disaster which they attribute

celeration of motion ought to be accompanied by a corresponding diminution in the distance separating the two bodies; and that, supposing the double effect to be continued to infinity, the moon would end by one day falling into the earth. However, they became reassured as to the fate of future gener

s. Another set pretended that out of one thousand new moons that had been observed, nine hundred and fifty had been attended with remarkable disturbances, such as cataclysms, revolutions, earthquakes, the deluge, etc. Then they believed in some mysterious influence exercised by her over human destinies — that every Selenite was attached to some inhabitant of the earth by a tie of sympathy;