Chapter 18 Chapter 17 Tycho

At six o'clock in the evening, the projectile passed the south pole less than sixty kilometers from the lunar surface.It is the same distance as passing through the North Pole.It can be seen that a precise elliptic curve has been revealed. At this time, the three travelers returned to the comfortable sunlight.They rediscovered these stars moving slowly from east to west.Together the three cheered to the glowing celestial body.Along with the light comes the warmth that immediately seeps through the metal walls.The window panes regained their usual transparency.The ice on the window panes suddenly disappeared as if by magic.In order to save money, the gas lamps were immediately extinguished.Only the device for making air had to consume the same amount of material as usual.

"Ah! how lovely these warm lights are!" said Nicholl. "After a long night, with what anxiety the moonmen awaited the appearance of the celestial bodies of day!" "Yes," replied Michel Ardan, taking a deep breath, perhaps, of the radiant ether, "light and warmth, and all life is here." At this point, the base of the projectile moved slightly away from the lunar surface and followed a fairly straight, elliptical orbit.Here, if the earth is also "full moon".Barbicane and his companions were able to see it again.However, it is hidden in the sunlight, and it cannot be seen at all.At this time, another object attracted their attention, and their telescope could reduce the distance between them and the southern part of the moon to one-eighth of a league.Never leaving their portholes again, they took note of every detail of this strange continent.

Daufair and Leibniz form two mountain groups stretching almost all the way to the South Pole.The first mountain group stretches from the South Pole to the forty-degree east latitude: the second mountain group extends from the eastern edge of the seventy-fifth parallel to the south pole. On their grotesque ridges were many of those blinding curtains of light that Father Seki had spoken of.Barbican was able to determine their nature with greater certainty than the famous Roman astronomer. "It's snow!" he exclaimed. "Snow?" repeated Nicholl. "Yes, Nicholl, it's snow that's frozen over. See how brightly they reflect. Cooling lava doesn't reflect so strongly. So there must be water on the moon, and there must be air." Well. Much less than we had hoped, but the fact cannot be doubted!"

Yes, beyond doubt!Moreover, if one day Barbicane returns to Earth, his notes will prove this important fact he discovered during his lunar observations. Doffer Peak and Leibniz Peak stand in the middle of a plain, surrounded by continuous craters and ring barriers.These two mountains are the only ones that meet in the crater region.Relatively speaking.The mountain is not steep, it just stays here and there.There are many steep peaks, the highest of which is 7,603 meters.But the projectile looked down on all this from above, and all the ups and downs of the terrain were hidden in this blinding light.Therefore, what appeared before the eyes of these three travelers was still the ancient lunar scenery that we often see, with monotonous colors, either snow white or pitch black, with no change in shade, this is because light cannot diffuse on the moon.Still, the barren world, because of its strangeness, attracted their attention.As if driven by a hurricane, they wandered in this chaotic region, watching the mountains retreating in line at their feet. Their eyes peered into the craters, fell into the trenches, climbed the walls again, and probed the mysterious The caves and crevasses went.But there was no sign of vegetation, no sign of a city, just patches of geological formations, streams of lava, and strips of smooth eruption that reflected the unbearable sun like huge mirrors.This is not a living world, this is a dead world where avalanches roll down mountain tops and disappear soundlessly at the bottom of abysses.There is movement, but no sound.

Barbicane's repeated observations confirmed that although the edge of the lunar disk is affected by various forces, the shape of the hills there is still the same as that in the central region.The same circular accumulation, the same land protrusions.But in our imagination, their terrain should be very different.Because, in the center of the moon disk, the shell of the moon, which is still in the compressible period, is subjected to the double gravitational force of the moon and the earth, and these two forces act in opposite directions along the extension line of the radius of the moon and the earth.On the contrary, at the edge of the lunar disk, the gravitational force of the moon can be said to be perpendicular to the gravitational force of the earth.Therefore, it seems that the topographic relief of the two places should be quite different under these two conditions.But that is not the case.The formation of the moon and its structure seem to have its own principles.It is not affected by outside forces.This also shows that the famous inference put forward by Arago: "The topography of the moon has not been affected by any external force" is not unreasonable.

In any case, the current lunar world is an image of death, and no one can say that life has ever had a relationship with this world. Michel Ardan, however, thought he had found a pile of ruins, which he donated to Barbicane.It is not far from the eightieth parallel of latitude and the thirty parallel of longitude.It was a heap of stones piled up in a fairly neat arrangement, forming a huge fortress, jutting out from a long trench which would have been the bed of a river in prehistoric times.Not far away stands the Shelt Crater Mountain, 5,646 meters high, which is as high as the Caucasus Mountain in Asia.With his customary enthusiasm, Michel Ardan supports what he calls the "obviousness" of the fortress.Below, again, he found the demolished walls of a city, here a still intact arch of a colonnade, there two or three columns lying on foundation stones; a little further on, a long chain of probably supporting channels The soffits of the pipes, and, elsewhere, several collapsed bridge piers resting deep in the trench.He recognized it all, but he saw it with such imaginative eyes, through such a whimsical pair of glasses, that we should not take it lightly.But who can prove, who dares to say, that the dear fellow did not really see what his two companions did not wish to see?

Time is precious and should not be wasted on such unhelpful discussions.Moon City, whether real or not, has long since disappeared in the distance.The distance between the projectile and the lunar surface was clearly increasing, and the shapes of the land on the lunar surface gradually blended and became blurred.Only the hills, craters, craters, and plains remain distinct.At this moment, a high mountain appeared on the left, one of the most beautiful mountains in lunar mountain morphology, and one of the wonders of this continent.This was Mount Newton, which Barbicane had no trouble identifying from his map of the moon.

To be precise, Mount Newton is located at seventy-seven degrees south latitude and sixteen degrees east longitude.This is a round crater, and the cliffs of the crater are as high as 7,264 meters, which is obviously insurmountable. Barbicane reminded his companions to observe that the height of this crater protruding from the surrounding plain is not equal to the depth of the crater.This huge cavern is unfathomable, a dark abyss where the sun never shines to the bottom.According to Humboldt, there is a kingdom of darkness that neither the sun nor the earth can penetrate.Some mythologists say that this is the mouth of hell, and not without reason.

"Newton Hills is the most typical crater," Barbicane said, "and no samples of this kind can be found on Earth. These craters prove that the Moon was first formed by cooling the surface, and that the mountains were later driven by underground fires." The mound is ejected to great heights, while the cave floor remains deep underground, much lower than the lunar surface." "I have no objection," replied Michel Ardan. A few minutes after passing Mount Newton, the projectile flew over the crater of Moretas.It then proceeded along the peaks of the rim of the Brancanus Mountains, reaching the Crave Crater at half past seven in the evening.

This is one of the most outstanding craters on the moon, located at 58 degrees south latitude and 15 degrees east longitude.Its height is estimated at 7091 meters.Although the three travelers were separated by four hundred kilometers, they could shorten the distance to four kilometers through their telescopes, so they could carefully appreciate the panoramic view of this vast crater. "Compared with lunar volcanoes," said Barbicane, "terrestrial volcanoes are nothing but mole-holes. The oldest calderas of Vesuvius and Etna are measured to be no more than six kilometers wide. The crater of Cantal in France is 10 kilometers wide. The crater of Ceylon is 70 kilometers wide and is considered to be the largest crater on earth. What is the diameter of these craters compared with the diameter of the Klavey crater under our feet?"

"How wide is this crater?" asked Nicholl. "Two hundred and twenty-six kilometers," answered Barbicane. "Really, it's the biggest crater on the moon; but there are plenty of craters two hundred kilometers, one hundred fifty kilometers, or one hundred kilometers wide!" "Ah! my friends," exclaimed Michel, "imagining, on this quiet night orb, when all these craters thundered and spewed together torrents of lava, hailstones, and What an astonishing spectacle it must have been when it was smoke billowing in flames! But now this moon is silent, a remnant of the past, like firecrackers, fountains, snakes, and sun-lamps, Fireworks were set off in full bloom, but in a blink of an eye there was only a pile of pitiful scraps of paper. Who can tell the cause and reason of these catastrophes and provide evidence?" Barbicane did not listen to Michel Ardan's chatter.He was contemplating the mile-wide cliffs of Mount Clavis.At the bottom of this vast and boundless cave, there are more than a hundred small fire holes that have been extinguished. It looks like a colander, but what surrounds them is a circle of 5,000-meter-high cliffs. The surrounding plains were desolate.Nothing is more barren than these hills, nothing is more deplorable than these volcanic ruins, if we may say so, why are these crags and mountains still there. 'Lai on the moon'! The earth satellite seems to have exploded in this place. The projectile has been advancing, and this chaos on the lunar surface has remained unchanged.There are endless craters, craters, and collapsed mountains.There is no plain, no sea.Seemingly an endless pattern of Doudo Switzerland and Norway.Finally, at the highest point in the center of this broken-branched region, arose one of the most beautiful mountains of the Moon: the radiant Mount Tycho, whose name our posterity will always remember the famous Danish astronomer. When the moon is full, no one who looks at it when there is not a shred of cloud fails to notice that luminous spot in the southern hemisphere, which Michel Ardan uses all the metaphors his imagination can afford him.This Tycho was to him a source of light, a radiating center, a crater emitting light: it was a luminous wheel, a chariot with its silvery tentacles tightly wrapped around the moon, a Huge fiery eyes, the halo on Pluto's head!It was as if the Creator threw a star at the moon, and the star instantly turned into powder! Tycho forms a luminous center so bright that the inhabitants of the earth, although at a distance of one hundred thousand leagues, can see it with the naked eye without a telescope, then in the eyes of an observer who is only one hundred and fifty leagues away. , the intensity of its light can be imagined!Its radiance, through pure ether, was so overwhelming to the eye that Barbicane and his friends could only endure it by blackening the lenses of their telescopes with the gas lamps.Then they observed, staring intently, neither speaking, except occasionally admiring.All their feelings and all their perceptions are concentrated in their eyes, just as sometimes their whole being is concentrated in the heart when they are strongly moved. Like Aristarchus and Copernicus, Tycho also belongs to the luminous mountain system.But it is the most perfect of them all, and the most prominent one, the undeniable proof that the formation of the moon is due to this terrible volcanic activity. Tycho is located at forty-three degrees south latitude and twelve degrees east longitude.In the center is a 87-kilometer-wide crater, slightly oval in shape, surrounded by ring-shaped barriers, and the east and west sides protrude from the outer plain for 5 kilometers.It is a group of high mountains, many white peaks arching around a common center, like a ring of glorious braids. This incomparable alpine complex is formed by the confluence of many hills, with many growths in the interior of the crater, all of which have not been photographed until now.Because every full moon is the time when Tycho shines.At this time, Tycho has no shadows, and the lines from all angles have completely disappeared, and the photos taken can only be a vast expanse of whiteness.Unpleasantly, this strange region has only been able to accurately reproduce its complex topography through photography.It was nothing but a hodgepodge of caves, craters, craters, and overlapping hills, and as far as the eye could see, it was a complete volcanic network on the pus-like plain.We can naturally understand that the boiling magma that was erupted from the center of the moon still maintains its original shape.The appearance of the moon, created by the power of the underworld in the past, has been completely preserved due to cooling and condensation. The distance between the three travelers and the main peak of Mount Tycho was not that far, so they were able to make detailed observations of the main situation of the crater.A series of mountain ranges started from the circular ridge of Mount Tycho, and spread down along the inner and outer slopes. The peaks overlapped, like huge platforms.The ridge on the west side was evidently three or four hundred feet higher than on the east side.No camping technology on earth can compare with this natural fortress.A city built deep in a cave is absolutely impenetrable. This is not only an impenetrable city, but also a city full of rolling hills and picturesque scenery.In fact, what nature has left for the bottom of this crater is not a hollow and boring landscape.The mountains here form a system of their own, forming a special mountain form, like a paradise.The three travelers saw clearly that the hills in the center seemed to be cones, with ups and downs, and their own special charm, as if they were created by heaven and earth, and they wanted to accept the masterpiece of lunar architecture here.Here is the temple square, there is the market, here is the base for building the palace, and a castle can be built on another high ground.All arched against a mountain fifteen hundred feet high.If the ancient Roman city were built on this vast circular site, the area would probably be ten times larger! "Ah!" Seeing this scene, Michel Ardan exclaimed excitedly. "What a majestic city we can build in this land surrounded by mountains! It will be a quiet city, a peaceful refuge from human misery! All these cynics, all these haters of humanity, All these people who hate social life can be isolated from the world and live in peace here!" "If all the people come! The place will be huge!" replied Barbicane simply.