Even when completely screened by the Earth, he would form a beautiful circle around her of yellow, red, and crimson light, in which she would appear to float like a vast sphere of jet in a glowing sea of gold, rubies, sparkling carbuncles and garnets." "It seems to me," said M'Nicholl, "that, taking everything into consideration, the invisible side has been rather shabbily treated." "I know I should not stay there very long," said Ardan; "the desire of seeing such a splendid sight as that eclipse would be enough to bring me to the visible side as soon as possible." "Yes, I have no doubt of that, friend Michael," pursued Barbican; "but to see the eclipse it would not be necessary to quit the dark hemisphere altogether.

You are, of course, aware that in consequence of her librations, or noddings, or wobblings, the Moon presents to the eyes of the Earth a little more than the exact half of her disc.

She has two motions, one on her path around the Earth, and the other a shifting around on her own axis by which she endeavors to keep the same side always turned towards our sphere.

This she cannot always do, as while one motion, the latter, is strictly uniform, the other being eccentric, sometimes accelerating her and sometimes retarding, she has not time to shift herself around completely and with perfect correspondence of movement.

At her perigee, for instance, she moves forward quicker than she can shift, so that we detect a portion of her western border before she has time to conceal it.