"Jules Verne. Off on a Comet. WORKS" - читать интересную книгу автора

The continuance of the splendid weather afforded Servadac
every facility for observing the heavens. Night after night,
constellations in their beauty lay stretched before his eyes--
an alphabet which, to his mortification, not to say his rage,
he was unable to decipher. In the apparent dimensions of
the fixed stars, in their distance, in their relative position
with regard to each other, he could observe no change.
Although it is established that our sun is approaching the
constellation of Hercules at the rate of more than 126,000,000
miles a year, and although Arcturus is traveling through space
at the rate of fifty-four miles a second--three times faster
than the earth goes round the sun,--yet such is the remoteness
of those stars that no appreciable change is evident to the senses.
The fixed stars taught him nothing.

Far otherwise was it with the planets. The orbits of Venus and Mercury
are within the orbit of the earth, Venus rotating at an average distance
of 66,130,000 miles from the sun, and Mercury at that of 35,393,000.
After pondering long, and as profoundly as he could, upon these figures,
Captain Servadac came to the conclusion that, as the earth was now receiving
about double the amount of light and heat that it had been receiving
before the catastrophe, it was receiving about the same as the planet Venus;
he was driven, therefore, to the estimate of the measure in which the earth
must have approximated to the sun, a deduction in which he was confirmed
when the opportunity came for him to observe Venus herself in the splendid
proportions that she now assumed.

That magnificent planet which--as Phosphorus or Lucifer, Hesperus or Vesper,
the evening star, the morning star, or the shepherd's star--has never failed
to attract the rapturous admiration of the most indifferent observers,
here revealed herself with unprecedented glory, exhibiting all the phases
of a lustrous moon in miniature. Various indentations in the outline
of its crescent showed that the solar beams were refracted into regions
of its surface where the sun had already set, and proved, beyond a doubt,
that the planet had an atmosphere of her own; and certain luminous points
projecting from the crescent as plainly marked the existence of mountains.
As the result of Servadac's computations, he formed the opinion that Venus
could hardly be at a greater distance than 6,000,000 miles from the earth.

"And a very safe distance, too," said Ben Zoof, when his master
told him the conclusion at which he had arrived.

"All very well for two armies, but for a couple of planets
not quite so safe, perhaps, as you may imagine. It is my
impression that it is more than likely we may run foul of Venus,"
said the captain.

"Plenty of air and water there, sir?" inquired the orderly.