Abstract
Even well into the twentieth century, students of the Moon, such as British amateur astronomer Walter Goodacre, considered the rays still to be the greatest lunar enigma, even though they had been studied for about 400 years. Observers were still baffled by the very nature of these conspicuously effulgent bright rays, spreading out like thin radial spokes crisscrossing the vast expanses of the lunar landscape.
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Notes
- 1.
Galileo Galilei, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, translated by Stillman Drake (1975), 37.
- 2.
George G. Carey, Astronomy as it is Known Today (1825), 66. Cary was also the author of A Complete System of Th eoretical and Mercantile Arithmetic (1818), Astronomy (1831), and Elements of Astronomy (1835).
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- 4.
Ibid., 154, 155.
- 5.
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- 6.
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V. A. Firsoff, Strange World of the Moon (1959), 164, 165.
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Richard Proctor, The Moon (1878), 179.
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- 20.
William Birt to Dr. John Lee, an unpublished letter (May 10, 1859), 2. Underlining is as in the letter. From the author’s collection.
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Garfinkle, R.A. (2020). Observing Lunar Bright and Light Rays, Bright Spots, and Banded Craters. In: Luna Cognita. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1664-1_23
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