Half-hours with the Telescope

The moon perhaps is the easiest of all objects of telescopic observation. A very moderate telescope will show her most striking features, while each increase of power is repaid by a view of new details. Yet in one sense the moon is a disappointing object even to the possessor of a first-class instrument. For the most careful and persistent scrutiny, carried on for a long series of years, too often fails to reward the observer by any new discoveries of interest. Our observer must therefore rather be prepared to enjoy the observation of recognized features than expect to add by his labors to our knowledge of the earth's nearest neighbor.

Although the moon is a pleasing and surprising telescopic object when full, the most interesting views of her features are obtained at other seasons. If we follow the moon as she waxes or wanes, we see the true nature of that rough and bleak mountain scenery, which when the moon is full is partially softened through the want of sharp contrasts of light and shadow. If we watch, even for half an hour only, the changing form of the ragged line separating light from darkness on the moon's disc, we cannot fail to be interested. "The outlying and isolated peak of some great mountain-chain becomes gradually larger, and is finally merged in the general luminous surface; great circular spaces, enclosed with rough and rocky walls many miles in diameter, become apparent; some with flat and perfectly smooth floors, variegated with streaks; others in which the flat floor is dotted with numerous pits or covered with broken fragments of rock. Occasionally a regularly-formed and unusually symmetrical circular formation makes its appearance; the exterior surface of the wall bristling with terraces rising gradually from the plain, the interior one much more steep, and instead of a flat floor, the inner space is concave or cup-shaped, with a solitary peak rising in the center. Solitary peaks rise from the level plains and cast their long narrow shadows athwart the smooth surface. Vast plains of a dusky tint become visible, not perfectly level, but covered with ripples, pits, and projections. Circular wells, which have no surrounding wall dip below the plain, and are met with even in the interior of the circular mountains and on the tops of their walls. From some of the mountains great streams of a brilliant white radiate in all directions and can be traced for hundreds of miles. We see, again, great fissures, almost perfectly straight and of great length, although very narrow, which appear like the cracks in moist clayey soil when dried by the sun."[14]

But interesting as these views may be, it was not for such discoveries as these that astronomers examined the surface of the moon. The examination of mere peculiarities of physical condition is, after all, but barren labor, if it lead to no discovery of physical variation. The principal charm of astronomy, as indeed of all observational science, lies in the study of change -- of progress, development, and decay, and specially of systematic variations taking place in regularly-recurring cycles. And it is in this relation that the moon has been so disappointing an object of astronomical observation. For two centuries and a half her face has been scanned with the closest possible scrutiny; her features have been portrayed in elaborate maps; many an astronomer has given a large portion of his life to the work of examining craters, plains, mountains, and valleys, for the signs of change; but until lately no certain evidence -- or rather, no evidence save of the most doubtful character -- has been afforded that the moon is other than "a dead and useless waste of extinct volcanoes." Whether the examination of the remarkable spot called Linné -- where lately signs were supposed to have been seen of a process of volcanic eruption -- will prove an exception to this rule, remains to be seen. The evidence seems to me strongly to favor the supposition of a change of some sort having taken place in this neighborhood.