An intensity of cold would prevail, in comparison
to which a Greenland winter is tropical. The temperature of interstellar
space, 250 deg. below zero, would be reached. Our Selenite, heartily tired
of the cold pale Earth, would gladly see her sink towards the horizon,
waning as she sank, till at last she appeared no more than half full.
Then suddenly a faint rim of the solar orb reveals itself on the edge of
the opposite sky. Slowly, more than 14 times more slowly than with us,
does the Sun lift himself above the lunar horizon. In half an hour, only
half his disc is revealed, but that is more than enough to flood the
lunar landscape with a dazzling intensity of light, of which we have no
counterpart on Earth. No atmosphere refracts it, no hazy screen softens
it, no enveloping vapor absorbs it, no obstructing medium colors it. It
breaks on the eye, harsh, white, dazzling, blinding, like the electric
light seen a few yards off. As the hours wear away, the more blasting
becomes the glare; and the higher he rises in the black sky, but slowly,
slowly. It takes him seven of our days to reach the meridian. By that
time the heat has increased from an arctic temperature to double the
boiling water point, from 250 deg.
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