"Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon" and "A Trip Around It"" - читать интересную книгу автора

face, always invisible to us, it has of necessity three hundred
and fifty-four hours of absolute night, tempered only by that
"pale glimmer which falls upon it from the stars."

Some well-intentioned, but rather obstinate persons, could not
at first comprehend how, if the moon displays invariably the
same face to the earth during her revolution, she can describe
one turn round herself. To such 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 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,
the letter of the Cambridge Observatory had said all that was to
be said in this respect. Every one knew that this altitude
varies according to the latitude of the observer. But the only
zones of the 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 that part of the globe, in order
that the projectile might be discharged perpendicularly, and so
the soonest escape the action of gravitation. This was an