It is the practice, in elementary and popular treatises on astronomy, to state merely the numerical results in giving data such as those embodied in the foregoing pages; and uninitiated readers, not knowing the means by which the figures are arrived at, are sometimes disposed to regard them with a certain amount of doubt or uncertainty. On this account we have thought it advisable to give, in as brief and concise a form as possible, the various steps by which these seemingly unattainable results are obtained.
The data explained in the foregoing text are here collected to facilitate reference.
Diameter of Moon 2160 miles 1/3·665 that of earth. Area 14,657,000 square miles 1/13·424 ” ” Area of the 7,328,500 square miles visible hemisphere Solid contents 5276 millions of cubic miles 1/49·186 ” ” Mass 73 trillions of tons 1/80 ” ” Density 3·39 (water = 1) 0·62 ” ” Force of 1/6 ” ” gravity at surface Mean distance 238,790 miles. from earth
CHAPTER V. ON THE EXISTENCE OR NON-EXISTENCE OF A LUNAR ATMOSPHERE.
At the close of the preceding chapter we stated that any force acting in opposition to that of gravity would be six times more effective on the moon than on the earth. But, in fact, it would in many cases be still more so; at all events, so far as projectile forces are concerned; for the reason that “the powerful coercer of projectile range,” as the earth’s atmosphere has been termed, has no counterpart, or at most a very disproportionate one, upon the moon.
The existence of an atmosphere surrounding the moon has been the subject of considerable controversy, and a great deal of evidence on both sides of the question has been offered from time to time, and is to be found scattered through the records of various classes of observations. Some of the more important items of this evidence it is our purpose to set forth in the course of the present chapter.
With the phenomena of the terrestrial atmosphere, with the effects that are attributable to it, we are all well familiar, and our best course therefore is to examine, as far as we are able, whether counterparts of any of these effects are manifested upon the moon. For instance, the clouds that are generated in and float through our air would, to an observer on the moon, appear as ever changing bright or dusky spots, obliterating certain of the permanent details of the earth’s surface, and probably skirting the terrestrial disc, like the changing belts we perceive on the planet Jupiter, or diversifying its features with less regularity, after the manner exhibited by the planet Mars. If such clouds existed on the moon it is evident that the details of its surface must be, from time to time, similarly obscured; but no trace of such obscuration has ever been detected. When the moon is observed with high telescopic powers, all its details come out sharp and clear, without the least appearance of change or the slightest symptoms of cloudiness other than the occasional want of general definition, which may be proved to be the result of unsteadiness or want of homogeneity in our own atmosphere; for we must tell the uninitiated that nights of pure, good definition, such as give the astronomer opportunity of examining with high powers the minute details of planetary features, are very few and far between. Out of the three hundred and sixty-five nights of a year there are probably not a dozen that an astronomer can call really fine: usually, even on nights that are to all common appearance superbly brilliant, some strata of air of different densities or temperatures, or in rapid motion, intervene between the observer and the object of his observation, and through these, owing to the ever-changing refractions which the rays of light coming from the object suffer in their course, observation of the delicate markings of a planet is impossible: all is blurred and confused, and nothing but bolder features can be recognized. It has in consequence sometimes happened that a slight indistinctness of some minute detail of the moon has been attributed to clouds or mists at the lunar surface, whereas the real cause has been only a bad condition of our own atmosphere. It may be confidently asserted that when all indistinctness due to terrestrial causes is taken account of or eliminated, there remain no traces whatever of any clouds or mists upon the surface of the moon.