Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/281

 Mars shone like a lantern in the sky, this interest will probably grow greater than ever. This small matter of 34,648,000 miles—not much over a third of the distance to the sun away from us—is almost as near as the earth and Mars will ever approach one another.

An association of observers interested in Mars who are stationed in different parts of the world has recently been formed. All parts of the planet are now kept under inspection and regular reports are sent to a central bureau which publishes the results in an astronomical magazine.

The following story is often related in connection with the satellites of Mars: Many years before the satellites were discovered, Swift, in "Gulliver's Travels," described the little planet as having two moons, one of which flew across the Martian sky three times a day! The thing seemed absurd, for never during all the explorations of the solar system had a moon been found which behaved in such an erratic fashion. Nevertheless, in 1877. Professor Asaph Hall, of Washington, discovered two tiny attendants to the planet of the War-god weaving "like golden shuttles" around the Martian orb, and one of these made three revolutions in its orbit while the planet itself turned once on its axis! Thus the month of this surprising moon is less than eight hours long.

This little rapid-transit moon flies only 3700 miles above the planet's surface, and, on account of the curvature of the globe it would not be visible beyond 69 degrees of latitude on each side of the equator. As seen from Mars, it rises in the west and sets in the east, changing from new to full one and a half times every night! With the constantly recurring metamorphoses of this tiny moon, which is scarcely 7 miles in diameter, and its