The Muse and the Crater, A Celestial Duality

“ Receiving re-echoed radio signals from Luna's pock-marked surface is already old stuff, last year's headlines. People read these reports as they go about their daily work: outwardly they do not change, but we feel confident that inwardly a very profound disturbance is moving into the hearts of humanity.
For thousands of years, as far back as recorded legend goes, the moon has been a symbol of the unattainable, of the heights of ambition and vanity and desire. ”

“ The glow of the sun drives the darkness before it and then appears. The glow of the moon is so much the more gentle in that it fills the world with radiance and leaves the darkness, which it permeates, but does not destroy. It is a newer evangel, which does not seek to rebuild the world, but simply takes it as it is and fills it with clear fire, adding to its rough vigor purity of motive. I do not see how anyone who loves moonlight can be bad, or even morose and melancholy. ”

“ Can you tell me why a dog will often bark at it almost all night? If you can, you can do more than any one else.
But you may ask what good the moon does to us. In the first place, it is very beautiful, and gives us great pleasure. It is also useful, as it frequently shines at night, and seems to relieve us partly from the darkness. The landscape is often charming when viewed by moonlight, and water never looks so lovely as when the moon is shining upon it.
Beside this, the moon causes that ebbing and flowing of the ocean called the tides. ”

“ The moon, an hour high just after eight, is past her half, and looks somehow more like a human face up there than ever before. As it grows later, we have such gorgeous and broad cloud-effects, with Luna's tawny halos, silver edgings—great fleeces, depths of blue-black in patches, and occasionally long, low bars hanging silently a while, and then gray bulging masses rolling along stately, sometimes in long procession. The moon travels in Scorpion to-night, and dims all the stars of that constellation except fiery Antares, who keeps on shining just to the big one's side. ”

“ A true lunatic, as we have hinted, is not content with thinking of the moon as a mere planet, convenient for the light it sheds, and the facilities it affords to sailors in finding their longitude. He wishes to personify, to deify; to speak to her, to think of her as a sentient being, celestial, divine, to be sure, but with a human heart; rejoicing, sorrowing with the mortals she looks down upon. Will any blockhead prate of the unreasonableness of such unphilosophical wishes? Has not the moon a face, eyes, nose, mouth, clothed with unearthly beauty, like and yet unlike that of the Sphinx? ”

“ Those nations who have worshipped the sun as god of the day, have paid similar worship to the moon as goddess of the night. The ancient myths spoke of the moon as a pure and lonely maiden, fond of silence, hunting, and the [Pg 73] forest shades. Increasing knowledge has shown us the moon as neither goddess nor maiden, but as a satellite of the earth, from which many ages ago it was cast off into space, and by the attraction of which it is held as by invisible and unbreakable chains. ”

“ One thing is certain, namely, that, during some phases, the moon's surface strikingly resembles a man's countenance. We usually represent the sun and the moon with the faces of men; and in the latter case the task is not difficult. Some would say that the moon is so drawn to reproduce some lunar deity: it would be more correct to say that the lunar deity was created through this human likeness. ”

“ The moon is an opaque, cold globe, covered with mountains, extinct volcanoes, and plains. She has neither water nor atmosphere, and always presents the same surface to the earth in consequence of rotating on her axis in the same time as she revolves round the earth. Moonlight is only reflected sunlight, the illuminated hemisphere being always turned towards the sun. ”

“ Upon the whole, after studying the dreadful lunar landscapes, one cannot feel a very enthusiastic sympathy with those who are seeking indications of the continued existence of some kind of life on the moon; such a world is better without inhabitants. ”

“ Do we not experience similar sensations when night silently creeps over the earth? But it imparts a feeling of loneliness and desolation when we watch it swallowing up 136the barren mountains and plains of the lunar world that we do not experience in terrestrial life. There are no cheerful interiors on the moon to which one can retreat when darkness hides the landscapes. ”

“ Slowly, more than 14 times more slowly than with us, does the Sun lift himself above the lunar horizon. In half an hour, only half his disc is revealed, but that is more than enough to flood the lunar landscape with a dazzling intensity of light, of which we have no counterpart on Earth. No atmosphere refracts it, no hazy screen softens it, no enveloping vapor absorbs it, no obstructing medium colors it. It breaks on the eye, harsh, white, dazzling, blinding, like the electric light seen a few yards off. As the hours wear away, the more blasting becomes the glare ”

“ And the brightness is rendered the more striking by the blackness of the surrounding sky. Since there is no atmosphere there can be no sky-light, for there is nothing above the lunar world to diffuse the solar beams; not a trace of that moisture which even in our tropical skies scatters some of the sun’s light and gives a certain degree of opacity or blueness, deep though it be, to the heavens by day. Upon the moon, with no light-diffusing vapour, the sky must be as dark or even darker than that with which we are familiar upon the finest of moonless nights. ”

“ Evidence is wanting of the existence of an atmosphere surrounding the Moon; no clouds or exhalations can be perceived, and no water is believed to exist on the lunar surface. Consequently there are no oceans, seas, rivers, or lakes; no fertile plains or forest-clad mountains, such as are found upon the Earth. Indeed, all the conditions essential for the support and maintenance of organic life by which we are surrounded appear to be nonexistent on the Moon. Our satellite has no seasons; its axial rotation is so slow that one lunar day is equal in length to fourteen of our days ”

“ When viewed with a telescope, the surface of the Moon is perceived to consist of lofty mountain chains with rugged peaks, numerous extinct volcanoes called crater mountains, hills, clefts, chasms, valleys, and level plains—a region of desolation, presenting to our gaze the shattered and upturned fragments of the Moon’s crust, convulsed by forces of a volcanic nature which have long since expended their energies and died out. ”

“ No trace of water or of an atmosphere has been found on the moon. It is possible that the temperature is too low. In any case, no displacement of a star by atmospheric refraction at occultation has been surely recorded. The moon seems to be dead.
The distance of the moon from the earth is just now the subject of re-measurement. The base line is from Greenwich to Cape of Good Hope, and the new feature introduced is the selection of a definite point on a crater (Mösting A) , instead of the moon’s edge, as the point whose distance is to be measured. ”

“ The telescopic appearance of the Moon is very interesting and beautiful, especially if the orb is observed when waxing and waning. As no aqueous vapour or cloud obscures the lunar surface, all its details can be perceived with great clearness and distinctness. Indeed, the topography of the Moon is better known than that of the Earth, for the whole of its surface has been mapped and delineated with great accuracy and precision. The Moon is in no sense a duplicate of its primary, and no analogy exists between the Earth and her satellite. ”

“ It is true that pictures and photographs partially supply the place of observation, but by no means so successfully as many imagine. The most realistic drawings and the sharpest photographs in astronomy are those of the moon, yet I think nobody would maintain that any picture in existence is capable of imparting a really satisfactory visual impression of the appearance of the lunar globe. Nobody who has not seen the moon with a telescope—it need not be a large one—can form a correct and definite idea of what the moon is like. ”

“ It is obvious, then, that the sunshine as it creeps over these Alpine landscapes in the moon, casting the black shadows of the peaks and craters many miles across the plains, and capping the summits of lofty mountains with light, while the lower regions far around them are yet buried in night, must clearly reveal the character of the lunar surface. Mountains that can not be seen at all when the light falls perpendicularly upon them, or, at the most, appear then merely as shining points, picture themselves by their shadows in startling silhouettes when illuminated laterally by the rising sun. ”

“ The mountain peaks on the moon throw long, well-defined shadows, characterised by a sharpness which we do not find in the shadows of terrestrial objects. The difference between the two cases arises from the absence of air from the moon. Our atmosphere diffuses a certain amount of light, which mitigates the blackness of terrestrial shadows and tends to soften their outline. No such influences are at work on the moon, and the sharpness of the shadows is taken advantage of in our attempts to measure the heights of the lunar mountains. ”

“ The one special feature of the Moon, which never fails to attract the attention of everybody who looks at our satellite for the first time through a telescope, are the crater mountains, which indeed constitute an immense majority of all the lunar mountains. Their outline almost always conforms, more or less, to that of the circle, but when seen near either limb of the Moon they often appear considerably oval simply because they are then seen considerably foreshortened. ”

“ If a planet lacks great internal geologic forces, large craters can survive almost indefinitely. Such is the case for the Moon. Most of the volcanism and other activity on the Moon ceased 31⁄2 billion years ago, as the dating of lunar samples obtained by the Apollo astronauts showed. Since that time, the lunar surface has been passively accumulating impact scars. The longer any particular surface area has been exposed, the more densely packed are the craters. Thus crater density is the first thing a planetary geologist looks for in photos of a new world. ”

“ The abundance and size of craters testify to an effectual power of lunar volcanic action greatly exceeding anything with which we are familiar on the earth, but it must be borne in mind that, the force of gravity on the moon being only one-sixth of that of the earth, the height to which rocky matter would be thrown would be six times as great, and the crater walls proportionately extensive. ”

“ Klein, a German astronomer, has recently called the attention of astronomers to a lunar crater some three miles wide, which had not before been observed, and which, he feels sure, was not in existence two years ago. Astronomers have long since given up all hope of tracing either the signs of actual life upon the moon or traces of the past existence of living creatures there. But there are still among them those who believe that by sedulous and careful scrutiny processes of material change may be recognised in that seemingly inert mass. ”

“ The examination of the lunar disc is therefore highly favorable for the study of the great geological phenomena of our own globe. As certain astronomers have remarked, the Moon's surface, though older than the Earth's, has remained younger. That is, it has undergone less change. No water has broken through its rugged elevations, filled up its scowling cavities, and by incessant action tended continuously to the production of a general level. No atmosphere, by its disintegrating, decomposing influence has softened off the rugged features of the plutonic mountains. ”

“ But moonlight is, from the very conditions of its production, of such a changeable and fugitive nature, and it affords after all so partial and imperfect an alleviation of night’s darkness, that we are fain to regard the light-giving office of the moon as one of secondary importance. Far more valuable to mankind in general, so estimable as to lead us to place it foremost in our category of lunar offices, is the duty which the moon performs in the character of a sanitary agent. ”

“ The only way by which such a catastrophe can be permanently avoided is by making the satellite move as we actually find it to do. The attraction between the earth and the moon still exists, but its effect is not then shown in bringing the moon in towards the earth. The attraction has now to exert its whole power in restraining the moon in its circular path; were the attraction to cease, the moon would start off in a straight line, and recede never to return. ”

“ But, alas! as the powers of the telescope increased, the vision of a moon crowded with life faded, until at last the cold fact struck home that the moon is, in all probability, a frozen and dried-up globe, a mere planetary skeleton, which could no more support life than the Humboldt glacier could grow roses. And yet this opinion may go too far. There is reason for thinking that the moon is not absolutely airless, and, while it has no visible bodies of water, its soil may, after all, not be entirely arid and desiccated. ”

“ We have only to recall the splendors of a night that is lighted by a full moon, and then to recollect that at new or old moon the earth is "full" as seen from our satellite, and that a full earth must give some fourteen times as much light as a full moon, in order to realize the brilliancy of an earth-lit night upon the moon. As the moon waxes to us, the earth wanes to the moon, and vice versa, and so the phenomenon of earth-shine on the lunar surface must be looked for before the first quarter and after the last quarter of the moon. ”

“ There are no "men in the moon." There cannot be, for they could not exist without air and water. 'Tis a pity, for the sight of this planet of ours, thirteen times the size which the moon appears to us, as fair, and bright, and shining as our nightly luminary, would be a sight worth seeing.
Science has made such progress, and common sense has so far kept pace with it, that the old idea that this was the only inhabited sphere in the universe is now completely exploded. There is no reason to believe that our planet is the only one in our solar system which is devoted to a useful career ”