treat more fully of this matter in my book upon the System of the Universe.[1]
Again, to assert that this sort of light is imparted to the Moon by the planet Venus is so childish as to be undeserving of an answer; for who is so ignorant as not to understand that at conjunction and within an angular distance of 60° it is quite impossible for the part of the Moon turned away from the Sun to be seen by the planet Venus?
But that this light is derived from the Sun penetrating with its light the solid mass of the Moon, and rendering it luminous, is equally untenable. For then this light would never lessen, since the hemisphere of the Moon is always illumined by the Sun, except at the moment of a lunar eclipse, yet really it quickly decreases while the Moon is drawing near to the end of her first quarter, and when she has passed
- ↑ Galileo's Systema Mundi. Owing to the violent opposition provoked by the discussion of the discoveries of Galileo, and their bearing on the Copernican system of astronomy, Galileo seems to have found it necessary to delay the publication of this work until 1632, when, believing himself safe under the friendship and patronage of Pope Urban VIII. and others in power at Rome, he at length published it. Urban, however, now turned against him, denounced the book and its author, and summoned him to Rome, where the well-known incidents of his trial and condemnation took place.
Astronomy, ch. vii.) to be due to the absorption of the violet and blue rays by the aqueous vapour of the Earth's atmosphere. The idea of a sensible lunar atmosphere is not in accordance with the observed phenomena of the occultations of stars.
