Those opaque azure
clouds, to which you saw a few minutes ago one of those beings directing
his course, are works of art, and places in which they move through
different regions of their atmosphere, and command the temperature and
the quantity of light most fitted for their philosophical researches,
or most convenient for the purposes of life.'"[11]
[Footnote 11: Davy, of course, was aware that, owing to increase of
distance, the sun would appear to an inhabitant of Saturn with a disk
only one ninetieth as great in area as that which it presents to our
eyes.]
But, while Saturn does not appear, with our present knowledge, to hold
out any encouragement to those who would regard it as the abode of
living creatures capable of being described in any terms except those of
pure imagination, yet it is so unique a curiosity among the heavenly
bodies that one returns again and again to the contemplation of its
strange details. Saturn has nine moons, but some of them are relatively
small bodies--the ninth, discovered photographically by Professor
Pickering in 1899, being especially minute--and others are situated at
great distances from the planet, and for these reasons, together with
the fact that the sunlight is so feeble upon them that, surface for
surface, they have only one ninetieth as much illumination as our moon
receives, they can not make a very brilliant display in the Saturnian
sky. To astronomers on Saturn they would, of course, be intensely
interesting because of their perturbations and particularly the effect
of their attraction on the rings.
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