From the Earth to the Moon; and, Round the Moon by Jules Verne
page 38 of 408 (09%)
page 38 of 408 (09%)
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have achieved one complete round you will have completed one
turn around yourself, since your eye will have traversed successively every point of the room. Well, then, the room is the heavens, the table is the earth, and the moon is yourself." And they would go away delighted. So, then the moon displays invariably the same face to the earth; nevertheless, to be quite exact, it is necessary to add that, in consequence of certain fluctuations of north and south, and of west and east, termed her libration, she permits rather more than half, that is to say, five-sevenths, to be seen. As soon as the ignoramuses came to understand as much as the director of the observatory himself knew, they began to worry themselves regarding her revolution round the earth, whereupon twenty scientific reviews immediately came to the rescue. They pointed out to them that the firmament, with its infinitude of stars, 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 bodies are on the same straight line, the earth occupying the center; that she is _new_ when she is in _conjunction_ with the sun, that is, when she is between it and the earth; and, lastly that she is in her _first_ or _last_ quarter, when she makes with the sun and the earth an angle of which she herself occupies the apex. Regarding the altitude which the moon attains above the horizon, |
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