Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/503

Rh of different material from that of which the most of the moon's surface is composed—a material possessing a higher reflective power. In this respect they resemble Aristarchus and other lunar craters that are remarkable for their brilliancy under a high illumination. Tycho itself, the center or hub, from which these streaks radiate like spokes, is very brilliant in the full moon. But immediately around Tycho there is a dark rim some twenty-live miles broad. Beyond this rim the surface becomes bright, and the bright region extends about ninety miles farther. Out of it spring the great rays or streaks which vary from ten to twenty miles in width, and many of which are several hundred miles long—one, which we have already mentioned as extending across the Sea of Serenity, being upward of two thousand miles in length. It has been truly said that we have nothing like these streaks upon the earth, and so there is no analogy to go by in trying to determine their nature. It has been suggested that if the moon had been split or shattered from within by some tremendous force, and molten matter from the interior had been thrust up into the cracks thus formed, and had cooled there into broad seams of rock, possessing a higher reflective power than the surrounding surface of the moon, then the appearances presented would not be unlike what we actually see. But there are serious objections to such a view, which we have not space to discuss here. It is enough to say that the nature of these streaks is still a question awaiting solution, and here is an opportunity for an important discovery, but one not to be achieved with an opera-glass.

Clavius (11) is one of the most impressive of all the lunar formations. There probably does not exist anywhere upon the earth so wild a scene upon a corresponding scale of grandeur. Of course, its details are far beyond the reach of the instrument we are supposed to be using, and yet even with a field-glass, or a powerful opera-glass, some of its main features are visible. It is represented in our third illustration, being the lowest and largest of the ring-like forms seen at the inner edge of the illuminated half of the disk; the rays of the rising sun touching the summits of some of the peaks in its interior have brought them into sight as a point of light, and at the same time, reaching across the gulf within, have lighted up the higher slopes of the great mountain-wall on the farther or eastern side of the crater valley, making it