What Really causes eclipses
We have now seen that the existence of dark bodies revolving about the luminous objects in the firmament has been admitted by practical observers from the earliest ages; and that in our own day such a mass of evidence has accumulated on the subject, that astronomers are compelled to admit that not only dark bodies which occasionally obscure the luminous stars when in conjunction, but that cosmical bodies of large size exist, and that "one at least is attached as a satellite to this earth." It is this dark or "non-luminous satellite," which when in conjunction or in a line with the moon and an observer on earth, IS THE IMMEDIATE CAUSE OF A LUNAR ECLIPSE.
The moon shining brightly during the whole time of eclipse, and with a light of different hue to that of the sun; and the light of the moon having, as previously shown, a different character to that of the sun; the earth not a globe, and not in motion round the sun, but sun and moon always over the earth's plane surface, render the proposition unavoidable as it is clearly undeniable that a lunar eclipse does not and could not in the nature of things arise from a shadow of the earth, but must of sheer logical necessity be referred to some other cause.
In the report of the Academy of Sciences for October 12th, 1846, and again for August, 1847, the director of one of the French observatories gives a number of observations and calculations which have led him to conclude that,--
"There is at least one non-luminous body of considerable magnitude which is attached as a satellite to this earth."
Sir John Herschel admits that:--
"Invisible moons exist in the firmament."
Sir John Lubbock is of the same opinion, and gives rules and formulæ for calculating their distances, periods,
At the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in 1850, the president stated that,---
"The opinion was gaining ground, that many of the fixed stars were accompanied by companions emitting no light."
"Stars that are invisible and consequently have no name move in space together with those that are visible." Diogenes of Appollonica.
Lambert in his cosmological letters admits the existence of "dark cosmical bodies of great size."
The facts now placed in contrast make it impossible to conclude otherwise than that the moon does not shine by reflection, but by a light peculiar to herself--that she is in short self-luminous. This conclusion is confirmed by the following consideration. The moon is said by the Newtonian philosophers to be a sphere. If so, its surface could not possibly reflect; a reflector must be concave or plane, so that the rays of light may have an "angle of incidence." If the surface is convex, every ray of light falls upon it in a line direct with radius, or perpendicular to the surface. Hence there cannot be an angle of incidence and therefore none of reflection. If the moon's surface were a mass of highly polished silver, it could not reflect from more than a mere point. Let a silvered glass ball of considerable size be held before a lamp or fire of any magnitude, and it will be seen that instead of the whole surface reflecting light there will only be a very small portion illuminated. But during full moon the whole discshines intensely, an effect which from a spherical surface is impossible.
Zetetic Astronomy, by 'Parallax' (pseud. Samuel Birley Rowbotham), [1881]
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