M., it has been
shining continuously for more than two hundred hours. On the other
hand, the coldest parts of the moon's surface, when the sun has only
just risen after a night of three hundred and forty hours, must have a
temperature more than a hundred degrees below zero.
Lord Rosse's later observations modified his conclusions, to some
extent, showing that he had at first underestimated the percentage of
simple reflected heat, but without causing him to make any radical
change in his ideas as to the maximum heat of the moon's surface.
For some time, however, there has been a growing skepticism among
astronomers, relating not so much to the correctness of his measures
as to the computations by which he inferred the high percentage of
obscure radiated beat compared with the reflected heat, and so deduced
the high temperature of lunar noon.
Professor Langley, who is now engaged in investigating the subject,
finds himself compelled to believe that the lunar surface never gets
even comfortably warm--because it has no blanket.
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