Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/311



moon's diameter is equal to one-fourth that of the earth. As viewed from a nearby planet—neighbor Venus, the planetoids, or neighbor Mars—the moon and the earth would appear as two close stars.

Both Jupiter and Saturn have moons larger than ours, but Jupiter, for instance, is over a thousand times larger than the earth, and Saturn ranks next to Jupiter. The moons of Mars are exceedingly tiny, and Mercury and Venus have none at all. Neptune has one moon, Uranus four, Jupiter nine and Saturn ten. Of all these moons, it is most natural for us to want complete information on the moon that lies nearest to us, the moon of the earth, which travels around us as we journey around the sun, at a distance of only 240,000 miles. With the aid of the greatest of telescopes, through which the accompanying photograph was taken, the moon can be brought within a clear range of 60 miles, and even closer. However, an opera-glass reduces the distance to one-half, and such a glass, or a very small telescope, is much better in every way for the amateur.

With the nearest planets millions of miles in the distance and the nearest stars millions of millions of miles away, the short distance of 240,000 miles to the moon seems almost no distance at