Recent Progress of Selenography

Abstract

THE most active period in the study of selenography during late years is comprised between two epochs, that of the announcement of a change in the crater Linné in the year 1866 by Dr. Schmidt, Director of the Observatory at Athens, and that of the announcement of a new crater north-west of Hyginus, by Dr, Klein, of Cologne, in the year 1877. The years elapsed between the two events above-mentioned have been characterised more or less by the manifestation of considerable interest in lunar studies, of which the projection, of a map of the moon 200 inches in diameter, to have been constructed under the auspices of the British Association for the Advancement of Science was the first indication. Of this map, four sections embracing an area of 100 square degrees of lunar latitude and longitude have been published, containing all the formations known in 1866-1868 to exist on this area, each of which is separately catalogued. Three of these sections, with catalogues, were published in the Reports of the British Association for 1866 and 1868; the fourth was published by the aid of a private subscription, in 1870. We are not aware that much use has been made of these areas and catalogues in endeavouring to ascertain if the 433 objects chronicled in them retain the characteristics they possessed in the above-mentioned years. It was a part of the duty of the Committee appointed by the Association to receive the reports of volunteer observers who undertook to examine the objects in certain subzones at stated intervals, which-resulted in the addition of several new objects to those originally published, but nothing has been effected in this direction since the Committee was not reappointed in 1868.