Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/505

 center of the moon contains some of the grandest of these strange configurations of conjoined mountain, plain, and crater. The names of the principal ones can be learned from the map, and the reader will find it very interesting to watch them coming into sight about first quarter, and passing out of sight about third quarter. At such times, with a field-glass, some of them look like enormous round holes in the inner edge of the illuminated half of the moon. Theophilus (23), Cyrillus (24), and Catharina (25), are three of the finest walled plains on the moon—Theophilus, in particular, being a splendid specimen of such formations. This chain of craters may be seen rapidly coming into sunlight at the edge of the Sea of Nectar, in our second illustration. The Altai Mountains (26) are a line of lofty cliffs, two hundred and eighty miles in length, surmounting a high table-land.

The Caucasus Mountains (38) are a mass of highlands and peaks, which introduce us to a series of formations resembling those of the mountainous regions of the earth. The highest peak in this range is about nineteen thousand feet. Between the Caucasus and the Apennines (44) lies a level pass, or strait, connecting the Sea of Serenity with the Sea of Showers. The Apennines are the greatest of the lunar mountain-chains, extending some four hundred and sixty miles in length, and containing one peak twenty-one thousand feet high, and many varying from twelve thousand to nearly twenty thousand. It will thus be seen that the Apennines of the earth sink into insignificance in comparison with their gigantic namesakes on the moon. As this range runs at a considerable angle to the line of sunrise, its high peaks are seen tipped with sunlight for a long distance beyond the generally illuminated edge about the time of first quarter. Even with the naked eye the sun-touched summits of the lunar Apennines may at that time be detected as a tongue of light projecting into the dark side of the moon. The Alps (41) are another mountain-mass of great elevation, whose highest peak is a good match for the Mont Blanc of the earth, after which it has been named.

Plato (42) is a very celebrated dark and level plain, surrounded by a mountain-ring, and presenting in its interior many puzzling and apparently changeable phenomena which have given rise to much speculation, but which, of course, lie far beyond the reach of opera-glasses. Plato is seen in our third illustration, being the second ring from the top.

Copernicus (46) is the last of the lunar formations that we shall describe. It bears a general resemblance to Tycho, and is slightly greater in diameter; it is, however, not quite so deep. It has a cluster of peaks in the center, whose tops may be detected with a field-glass, as a speck of light when the rays of the morning sun, slanting across the valley, illuminate them while their environs are yet buried in night. Copernicus is the center of a system of light-streaks somewhat resembling those of Tycho, but very much shorter.