Rensselaer Union, Volume 1, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 September 1869 — The Heat from the Moon. [ARTICLE]

The Heat from the Moon.

Lord Rossr has been measuring the heat that comes to us from th* moon. Using one of his great reflecting telescopes as a burning mirror, he has condensed the moon's rays upon one of the most delicate of heat gaugers—a thermo pile. Without being able to determine by what fraction of a Fahrenheit’s degree; the inner warmth increases the temperature of the terrestrial atmosphere, he has found, as an apthat from the sun. He conceives that the variation of heat from one satellite follows the same law as that of its light; < e., that we liave the moat warmth from the full moon, and least from the nearly new. By comparison with a terrestrial source of heat, Lord Kosse estimates the actual temperature of the moon’s surface at lunar mid-day to be about 500 degrees Fahrenheit The scorching results frfon the dew rotation of th*moon, which makes its day equal to ouf month, and from the absence or any atmosphere to screen the lunar world. Years ago, Sir John Herschel, wb® has more than once proved himself a prophet by his sagacious inferenrea, remarked that “The surface of the fullmoon exposed to us must., necessarily be very much heated,, possiblyto a degm much exceeding that* of bailing. water/ Fan tenaUa and his followers to the con trary notwithstanding, the moon can be no place for living beings, unless they are MlMMDders,