Page:The sidereal messenger of Galileo Galilei.pdf/46

 if it were shut in on all sides by very lofty mountains arranged on the circumference of a perfect circle; for the tract in the Moon is walled in with peaks of such enormous height that the furthest side adjacent to the dark portion of the Moon is seen bathed in sunlight before the boundary between light and shade reaches half-way across the circular space. But according to the characteristic property of the rest of the spots, the shaded portion of this too faces the Sun, and the bright part is towards the dark side of the Moon, which for the third time I advise to be carefully noticed as a most solid proof of the ruggednesses and unevennesses spread over the whole of the bright region of the Moon. Of these spots, moreover, the darkest are always those which are near to the boundary-line between the light and the shadow, but those further off appear both smaller in size and less decidedly dark; so that at length, when the Moon at opposition becomes full, the darkness of the cavities differs from the brightness of the prominences with a subdued and very slight difference.

These phenomena which we have reviewed are observed in the bright tracts of the Moon. In the great spots we do not see such differences of depressions and prominences as we are compelled to recognise in the brighter parts, owing to the change of their