"Paul Preuss - Venus Prime 4 - The Medusa Encounter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preuss Paul)

ARTHUR C. CLARKEтАЩS VENUS PRIME, VOLUME 4




Introduction
by ARTHUR C. CLARKE




O ne of the advantages of living on the Equator (well, only 800 kilometers from it) is that the Moon
and planets pass vertically overhead, allowing one to see them with a clarity never possible in higher
latitudes. This has prompted me to acquire a succession of ever-larger telescopes during the past forty
years, beginning with the classic 3 1/2-inch Questar, then an 8-inch, and finally a 14-inch, Celestron.
(Sorry about the obsolete units, but we seem stuck with them for small telescopes-even though
centimeters make them sound much more impressive.)

The Moon, with its incomparable and ever-changing scenery, is my favorite subject, and I never tire of
showing it to unsuspecting visitors. As the 14-inch is fitted with a binocular eyepiece, they feel they are
looking through the window of a spaceship, and not peering through the restricted field of a single lens.
The difference has to be experienced to be appreciated, and invariably invokes a gasp of amazement.

After the Moon, Saturn and Jupiter compete for second place as celestial attractions. Thanks to its
glorious rings, Saturn is breathtaking and unique-but thereтАЩs little else to be seen, as the planet itself is
virtually featureless.

The considerably larger disc of Jupiter is much more interesting; it usually displays prominent cloud
belts lying parallel to the equator, and so many fugitive details that one could spend a lifetime trying to
elucidate them. Indeed, men have done just this: for more than a century, Jupiter has been a happy
hunting ground for armies of devoted amateur astronomers.*

* I feel a particular sympathy for one of them, the British engineer P.B. Molesworth (1867-1908). Some
years ago, I visited the relics of his observatory at Trincomalee, on the east coast of Sri Lanka. Despite
his early death, MolesworthтАЩs spare-time astronomical work was so outstanding that his name has now
been given to a splendid crater on Mars, 175 kilometers across.

Yet no view through the telescope can do justice to a planet with more than a hundred times the surface
area of our world. To imagine a somewhat farfetched тАЬthought experiment,тАЭ if one skinned the Earth and
pinned its pelt like a trophy on the side of Jupiter, it would look about as large as India on a terrestrial
globe. That subcontinent is no small piece of real estate; yet Jupiter is to Earth as Earth is to India. . . .



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 ARTHUR C. CLARKEтАЩS VENUS PRIME, VOLUME 4

Unfortunately for would-be colonists, even if they were prepared to tolerate the local two-and-a-half
gravities, Jupiter has no solid surfaceтАФor even a liquid one. ItтАЩs all weather, at least for the first few
thousand kilometers down toward the distant central core. (For details of which, see 2061: Odyssey