Page:Mars - Lowell.djvu/227

 line upon her surface where the sun is just rising or setting. Now, as we know, the shadows cast at sunrise or sunset are very long, much longer than the objects that cast them are high. This is due to the obliquity at which the light strikes them; the same effect being produced by any sufficiently oblique light, such as an electric light at a distance. Imperceptible in themselves, the heights become perceptible by their shadows. A road illuminated by a distant arc light gives us a startling instance of this; the smooth surface taking on from its shadows the look of a ploughed field. It is this indirect kind of magnification that enables astronomers to measure the lunar mountains, and even renders such vicariously visible to the naked eye. Every one has noticed how ragged and irregular the inner edge of the Moon looks, while her outer edge seems perfectly smooth. In one place it will appear to project beyond the perfect ellipse, in another to recede from it. The first effect is due to mountain tops catching the sun's rays before the plains about them; the other, to mountain tops further advanced into the lunar day, whose shadows still shroud the valleys at their feet. Yet the elevations and depressions thus rendered so noticeable vanish in profile on the limb.

Much as we see the Moon with the naked eye do we see Mars with the telescope. Mars being