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 W How will we
travel through
NE
space?
Relive the
solar eclipse

OVER

1000
AMAZING
What are
Saturn's rings
made of?

FACTS
BOOK OF

Everything you want to know about the universe we live in

Space
engineering

A tour of Observing
the ISS from space

Life in
space

What causes
supernovas? How
telescopes
work

Celebrate 25
years of Hubble

SOLAR SYSTEM EXPLORATION UNIVERSE ASTRONOMY

 Welcome to
BOOK OF

SPACE
Space has fascinated mankind from the earliest days of
civilization, and as we keep scratching the surface of the
vast universe in which we live, our sense of awe and wonder
continues to grow unabated. Now, with the technological
advancements being made by the world’s space agencies,
we understand more than ever about the things that are
happening beyond our own planet. This new edition of
the How It Works Book of Space has been updated with
more of latest astronomical advancements, stunning space
photography from the most advanced telescopes on the
planet, and glimpses at what the future of space exploration
holds, such as the planned mission to Mars. Taking you from
the heart of our Solar System and out into deep space. Get
ready for lift off and discover the depths of our universe and
beyond with Curiosity’s latest discoveries, tourism in space
and the spiders of Mars.
 BOOK OF

SPACE Imagine Publishing Ltd

Richmond House
33 Richmond Hill
Bournemouth
Dorset BH2 6EZ
 +44 (0) 1202 586200
Website: www.imagine-publishing.co.uk
Twitter: @Books_Imagine
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Aaron Asadi

Head of Design
Ross Andrews

Production Editor
Jen Neal

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Alexander Phoenix

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James Sheppard

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Distributed in the UK, Eire & the Rest of the World by

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Disclaimer
The publisher cannot accept responsibility for any unsolicited material lost or damaged in the
post. All text and layout is the copyright of Imagine Publishing Ltd. Nothing in this bookazine may
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This bookazine is fully independent and not affiliated in any way with the companies mentioned herein.

How It Works Book of Space Seventh Edition © 2016 Imagine Publishing Ltd

ISBN 978 1785 462 474

Part of the

bookazine series
 BOOK OF SPACE

CONTENTS
Solar System
010 Journey through the solar system
014 Earth from space
018 Inside the Sun
020 The Sun, not as we know it
021 Solar eclipse
022 Solar tornadoes
024 The Moon
028 The first moonlanding
030 Amazing facts about eclipses
034 Mercury
036 Venus
038 Mars
040 The spiders from Mars
040 Is Titan Earth’s toxic twin?
041 Weather on Jupiter
042
044
Jupiter
Saturn
010
046 Saturn’s rings Journey through the
048 Uranus solar system
050 Neptune
052 Neptune’s boomerang moon
052 Mercury’s orbit
053 Secrets of transits 022
Solar
042
054 Pluto
tornadoes Saturn
056 Europa
058 Dwarf planets
060 Auroras on other planets
062 Planet killers
All Images © NASA

158
Evolution of
telescopes

006
 Exploration Universe
068 Astronaut training 112 10 secrets of space
070 Inside a space suit 116 The Big Bang
071 Underwater astronaut training 120 A star is born
072 Life in space 122 Zombie stars
076 International Space Station 128 Mystery of dark matter
080 Curiosity’s greatest discoveries 134 Space volcanoes
084 Mapping the galaxy 134 Meteor showers
085 Galileo Space Probe 135 Light years
135 Hidden planets
086 Rocket science
136 Search for a new Earth
090 Mega rockets
140 Galaxy classification
094 The Orion spacecraft
142 Supernovas
096 Spacecraft re-entry
146 When world’s collide
098 Space tourism
150 Meteorological satellites
102 ELS launch site
152 Search for alien life
104 Evolution of space travel
106 Voyager probes
042
108 The Herschel crater
109 Antstronauts
109 Companion robots
Saturn 036
Venus
071 Astronomy
Underwater 158 Evolution of telescopes
astronauts 160 Seeing stars
162 Telescope classification
164 James Webb Space Telescope
165 European Extremely Large
Telescope
166 How far can we see into space?
168 Spectrography
169 Meteor showers
170 Wildest weather in space
174 Radio telescopes
174 Listening to the universe
175 Spitzer Space Telescope

170
Wild space weather
© SPL

007
 SOLAR
SYSTEM
010 Journey through the 028 First Moon landing 042 Jupiter
Solar System One small step for man... The most massive planet
Find out what’s orbiting the Sun
030 Amazing facts about eclipses 044 Saturn
014 Earth The smallest planet Famous for its rings
Phenomenal views of home
034 Mercury 046 Rings of Saturn
018 Inside the Sun The smallest planet Saturn’s stellar crown
The giant star that keeps us alive
036 Venus 048 Uranus
020 Our amazing Sun Earth’s sister planet First to be seen by telescope
The Sun, but not as we know it
038 Mars 050 Neptune
021 Solar eclipse The red planet The windiest planet
When the Moon obscures the Sun
040 The spiders from Mars 052 Neptune’s boomerang moon
022 Solar tornadoes Discover the arachnids of Mars A satellite with an odd trajectory
Huge explosions from the Sun
040 Is Titan Earth’s toxic twin? 052 Mercury’s orbit
024 Exploring the Moon How we link to Saturn’s moon This planet’s curvature is unique
Discovering lunar secrets
041 Weather on Jupiter 053 Secrets of transits
Raging storms and swirling winds Sizing up our Solar System
054 Pluto
The ex-planet
056 Europa
Hidden life under the ice?
058 Dwarf planets
In orbit but undersized
060 Auroras on other planets
This phenomenon is universal
062 Planet killers
Meet the space assassins

046
Exploring
the Moon
008
 062
Planet
killers

036
Earth’s
sister
planet

010
Journey through
the Solar System
009
 SOLAR SYSTEM

Journey through the

Solar System
Bound to the immense mass of the Sun by
gravity, the contents of our Solar System
are numerous and spectacular
he Solar System formed about 4.6 billion years outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. made up from rocks and metals, have no ring systems

T ago, when part of a giant molecular cloud had

a gravitational collapse. The centre became
the Sun, which comprises more than 99 per cent of the
They are much bigger than the terrestrial planets and
are mostly made of helium and hydrogen, although
Uranus and Neptune also contain ice. All of the outer
and have a low number of satellites (moons). They
include Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. Except for
Mercury, the inner planets also have recognisable
Solar System’s total mass. The rest became a dense, planets have ring systems made of cosmic dust. These weather systems operating in their atmospheres.
flat rotating disk of gas from which planets formed, planets comprise more than 90 per cent of the rest of In addition to the eight main planets, there are also
called a protoplanetary disk. In our Solar System, the solar system’s mass. dwarf planets such as Pluto. The five dwarf planets
most of that disk became the eight planets, each of The four inner planets are very close to the Sun. To are Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake and Eris. In
which orbits the Sun. grant perspective, for example, the distance between addition, the Solar System is home to numerous
There are two different categories of planets: gas Jupiter and Saturn is larger than the radius of all the small solar system bodies, which include all minor
giants and terrestrials. The gas giants are the four inner planets put together. These terrestrials are planets, asteroids and comets.

Earth to Saturn
Can’t afford that ticket on the next spaceship out of
town? Well, fear not, for if you are the patient type and
hold an interplanetary driving licence then you can

in a Mini Metro!
How long would it take to reach the
drive to that Earth colony orbiting Saturn in next to no
time… well, relatively speaking. In our souped-up Mini
Metro, travelling at an average speed of 120mph, any
traveller can reach Saturn in only 842 years. Better
planets in a moderately priced car? stock up on travel sweets then…

010
DID YOU KNOW? Astronomers estimate there may be billions of solar systems in our galaxy. About 70 have been discovered

Measuring our
What and where are

Image courtesy of NASA

Solar System
the asteroid belts? Understanding the size of
planets and where they are
Before the development of radar, astronomers
measured the distance between planets
Below shows the placement of inner Solar System objects on through trigonometry, a process where
20 July 2002. Light blue lines are planet orbits. Green dots distance to an object is derived from the
There are a few asteroid belts in show asteroids. Red dots are asteroids that come within 1.3AU
measurements of angles and distances taken
our Solar System, but none can of the Sun. Comets are dark blue squares, and dark blue
points are Jupiter Trojans between two known positions. Today, radar is
compare to the main belt, a massive
the predominant method of measuring
ring between the orbits of Mars and
distance and allows for more accurate
Jupiter. Here the dwarf planet Ceres, the
measurements to be attained. This process
large asteroids 2 Pallas, 10 Hygiea and 4
works by astronomers timing how long it
Vesta, and millions of small asteroids and
takes the radar beam, which is travelling at
dust particles orbit the Sun. Most of the larger
the speed of light, to travel the distance to an
asteroids have elliptical orbits and an orbital
object and back. By multiplying the speed of
period of a few years. Some astronomers
light by time taken, then dividing that in two,
believe that the main belt’s contents are left
scientists can derive the distance to the object.
over from a planetary collision or from a
Once distance has been derived, the mass
planet that never formed due to the strong
of the object can be ascertained by monitoring
gravitational pull of Jupiter.
the orbital periods of circling satellites. To do
this astronomers measure the angular

Bound together separation between the satellite and the

object and then use trigonometry to convert
that angular separation into distance.
by gravity Astronomers can then use Kepler’s third law
to determine total mass.
When the International Astronomical Union (IAU) defined
planets in 2006, part of that definition included the 1 AU (astronomical unit) = 92,960,000 miles, the
mean distance between the Sun and the Earth
requirement that a planet has enough mass that its self-
gravity causes it to reach hydrostatic equilibrium. The
MERCURY

VENUS

EARTH

MARS

JUPITER

SATURN

URANUS

NEPTUNE

PLUTO
planet is able to resist compressive forces in space to hold
THE SOLAR
together and stay rounded in shape.
SYSTEM IN
Planets also “clear the neighbourhood” around their
AU
orbits. This means that there are no other bodies of the
same size in its orbit. The Sun has a strong enough pull to
keep the planets and other bodies orbiting around it.

A map of Earth’s
gravitational
strength
9.54AU
0.39AU

5.20AU
0.72AU

39.5AU
30.1AU
1.52AU

19.2AU
1AU

Pluto the dwarf

Since its discovery in 1930, Pluto had been considered the ninth planet
Size compared
to Earth
Pluto is a dwarf-planet,
smaller than
in our Solar System. However, more recent discoveries of dwarf planets our own moon
larger in size and mass than Pluto have made some astronomers
question its status. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union
(IAU) decided upon a conclusive definition of what
constituted a planet. Pluto’s low mass – not even a fifth the
mass of the Moon – excluded it from that definition. Now
Pluto is considered a dwarf planet.

Jupiter – 459 years

Mars a little too dusty? Then why not visit Jupiter,
only 459 years of 120mph driving away

Neptune – 2,497 years

Mars – 134 years One for colder climates? Then Neptune should be top of
At 120mph you could drive to the planet named your list. At 2,497 years distance, though, it is a long drive,
after the Roman god of war in only 134 years so make sure you take regular breaks and keep at 120mph!

011
 SOLAR SYSTEM

8. Neptune 5. Jupiter
Neptune was imaged for the first The largest and most
time in 1989, discovering an massive of all planets in the
encircling set of rings and six of its Solar System, Jupiter has
13 moons. Neptune’s structure is almost 2.5 times the mass of
very similar to that of Uranus, with the other eight planets
no solid surface and central layers combined and over 1,300
of water, methane and ammonia Earths could fit inside it.
ices as well as a possible rock/ice- Jupiter is also the first of the
based core. gas giants and is largely not
solid in composition,
consisting of an outer layer of
The Statistics gaseous hydrogen and
helium, an outer layer of
Neptune liquid hydrogen and helium
and an inner layer of metallic
hydrogen. However, deep in
7. Uranus its body (roughly 37,000
The first planet to be discovered by telescope, miles in) there is a solid core
Uranus appears to the eye as a pale blue, made up of rock, metal and
characterless disk, encircled by a thin system of 11 hydrogen compounds.
rings and 27 tiny moons. Its blue colour is a result of
the absorption of the sunlight’s red wavelengths by
methane-ice clouds within the planet’s cold
atmosphere – a process which also renders its 6. Saturn
Type: Gas giant atmosphere calm and inert thanks to the creation of A massive ball of gas and liquid, Saturn is the least dense of all the
Rotation (Equatorial): haze particles. In reality, however, Uranus’s planets in the Solar System. Circled by a spectacular system of
atmosphere is active and consistently changing with rings, which are composed of stellar dust, boulders and gases,
60,179 days
huge winds driving systems of ammonia and water Saturn has a hazy appearance and due to its rapid spin is a
Rotation (Polar): 16.11 hours massive ten per cent larger at its equator than at its pole.
over its surface.
Volume: (Earth = 1) 57.74 Interestingly, Saturn is so light – thanks to its
Average distance from Sun: composition from the lightest elements – that if it
2.8 billion miles
Number of moons: 13
The Statistics could be hypothetically placed in a galactic-sized
ocean of water it would float. As with Jupiter,
Speed: 5.43km/s
Uranus Saturn is a gas giant with a tiny solid core
Surface temp: -220°C composed of rock and ice.

Comets
Comets are small,
fragile, irregularly
The Statistics
shaped bodies Saturn
composed of a
mixture of non-
volatile grains and
frozen gases
Type: Gas giant
Rotation (Equatorial): The Sun
30,799 days 4.6 billions years old and
Rotation (Polar): 17.24 hours currently in its main-sequence
9. Pluto Volume: (Earth = 1) 63.1
stage, our Sun is a huge
sphere of exceedingly hot
Often mistaken as the last planet in our Solar System, Average distance from Sun:
Pluto is actually not one but instead a dwarf planet. Type: Gas giant plasma containing 750 times
1.78 billion miles the mass of all the solar
Dwarf planets are bodies that orbit the Sun and have Rotation (Equatorial):
Number of moons: 27 system’s planets put together.
enough mass and gravity to be spherical, but ones that 10,759 days
have not cleared the region around its orbit. Pluto is such Speed: 6.81km/s Deep in its core nuclear fusion
Rotation (Polar): 10.66 hours
a dwarf planet and is one of the furthest circling bodies Surface temp: -214°C of hydrogen produces
Volume: (Earth = 1) 763.59 massive energy that is
of our solar system. Pluto’s atmosphere is 99.97 per cent Average distance from Sun:
nitrogen and it is astronomically cold, with an average gradually carried outwards
888 million miles through convection before
temperature of -230 degrees Celsius.
Number of moons: 34 escaping into space.
Speed: 9.69km/s
The Statistics Surface temp: -140°C
The Statistics
Pluto
The Sun

Main belt
Often referred to as the
asteroid belt, the Main belt
is an encircling ring of
meteors, asteroids, dwarf
Type: Dwarf planets and dust particles
that sits between the Type: Star
Rotation (Equatorial):
terrestrial planets and the Rotation (Equatorial): 25 days
90,613 days gas giants.
Rotation (Polar): N/A Rotation (Polar): 34 days
Volume: (Earth = 1) 0.0059 Mass: (Earth= 1) 333,000
Average distance from Sun: Surface temperature: 5,500°C
3.7 billion miles Core temperature:
Number of moons: 3 15 million °C
Speed: 4.666km/s Diameter (Equatorial):
Surface temp: -230°C 864,900 miles

012
DID YOU KNOW? Our solar system is nearly five billion years old and is made up of eight planets and 170 moons

3. Earth 4. Mars
The Statistics The Statistics While similar in internal
composition to its
Known as the red planet thanks to its rust-red colouring, and
named after the Roman god of war, Mars is home to the highest
Jupiter Earth neighbouring planets – volcanoes (albeit dry and inactive) of any planet in the Solar
composed of three distinct System. Current research and evidence suggests that while Mars is
layers made up mainly of iron, an inert planet now, in the past it was very much active, with
magnesium and silicates volcanic activity and water existing over large parts of it. Mars is
respectively – Earth differs on the outermost of the four terrestrial ‘rocky’ planets and its internal
its surface thanks to an structure is rich in sulphur, iron sulphide and silicate rock.
abundance of liquid water and
an oxygen-rich atmosphere.
Due to Earth’s rotation the
planet bulges at its equator by
The Statistics
13 miles when compared to Mars
Type: Gas giant Type: Terrestrial both its poles and its spin axis
Rotation (Equatorial): Rotation (Equatorial): is tilted at an angle of 23.5
4,331 days 365.26 days degrees, one of the factors
Rotation (Polar): 9.93 hours Rotation (Polar): 23.93 hours that gives rise to its seasons.
Volume: (Earth = 1) 1,321 Mass: (Earth = 1) 1
Average distance from Sun: Average distance from Sun:
483.6 million miles 93 million miles
Number of moons: 63 Number of moons: 1
Speed: 13.07km/s Speed: 29.783km/s
Surface temp: -110°C Surface temp: 15°C Type: Terrestrial
Rotation (Equatorial):
687 days
Rotation (Polar): 24.63 days
Mass: (Earth = 1) 0.15
Average distance from Sun:
141.6 million miles
Number of moons: 2
Speed: 24.007km/s
Surface temp: -125°C – 25°C

Map of the
Solar System
Discover the star, planets
and space phenomena that
make up our Solar System

The Statistics The Statistics

Venus
Mercury

2. Venus
The hottest of all planets, Venus –
thanks to its permanent
atmospheric blanket of dense
gaseous clouds – has an average
temperature of 464 degrees
Celsius. The surface is dry, lifeless, Type: Terrestrial
Type: Terrestrial scorching hot and littered with Rotation (Equatorial):
Rotation (Equatorial): 88 days 1. Mercury volcanoes and dust storms. 224.7 days
Rotation (Polar): 59 days Iron-rich Mercury is the smallest of the main planets in the Named after the Roman goddess
Rotation (Polar): 243 days
Mass: (Earth = 1) 0.056 Solar System and the closest to the Sun. There is almost no of love and beauty due to its
protective atmosphere surrounding Mercury and, because of beautiful, sun-reflecting, cloud- Mass: (Earth = 1) 0.86
Average distance from Sun: Average distance from Sun:
this, temperatures on the planet fluctuate massively from based atmosphere, in reality
All images © NASA

36 million miles 427 degrees Celsius during the day to -187 degrees Celsius Venus holds one of the most 67.2 million miles
Number of moons: 0 during the night. Worryingly, if an observer were able to hostile environments of any Number of moons: 0
Speed: 47.87km/s stand on the planet they would experience a period of 176 planet. Interestingly, Venus spins Speed: 35.02km/s
Surface temp: -187°c – 427 °C Earth days between one sunrise and the next. Better stock in the opposite direction from Surface temp: 464°C
up on suntan lotion and woolly socks then… most other planets.

013
 SOLAR SYSTEM

Earth
From astronaut snaps taken with handheld cameras to
advanced satellite imagery that enables us to predict natural
disasters, discover the planet as you’ve never seen it before

Spectacular aspect of On Christmas Eve 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 captured

the Great Barrier Reef this unique view of Earth. Known as ‘Earthrise’, this
photo of Earth rising over the lunar horizon was
humankind’s first glimpse of the Earth from deep space
© NASA

© NASA

© NASA
© NASA

014
DID YOU KNOW? ISS astronauts spend ten mins a day taking photos of Earth with digital and 35mm and 70mm film cameras

Aurora australis
taken from the ISS

ESA’s Envisat
The European Space Agency’s environmental satellite (Envisat)
was launched into a polar orbit on 1 March 2002. Its instruments
© NASA

are used to study the ocean, agriculture, ice formations and

atmospheric conditions of Earth.

RA-2 LRR
Radar Altimeter 2 (RA-2), The Laser Retro-Reflector (LRR) is
working on the 13.575GHz positioned on the Earth-facing side of

© ESA
(Ku-band) and 3.2GHz the Envisat, close to the RA-2 antenna.
(S-band) frequencies, It’s a passive device that allows
bounces the two-way high-power pulsed ground-based
radar echo off the Earth’s lasers to accurately determine the
GOMOS
The Global Ozone Monitoring by Occultation of Stars
surface in less than a position of the satellite to calibrate the
(GOMOS) is the first instrument to use the occultation
nanosecond. The power RA-2 and DORIS instruments
of stars to measure trace gases and aerosols from
and shape of these pulses
15-100km (9-62mi) above the Earth. In each orbit, it can
enables it to define land
check 40 stars and determine the presence of
and ocean topography
atmospheric chemistry by the depletion of their light
and monitor snow and
ice fields

ASAR MERIS
An Advanced Synthetic The MEdium Resolution Imaging
Aperture Radar (ASAR) Spectrometer (MERIS) consists of five
monitors ocean wave and cameras that are each linked to
land heights within fractions spectrometers to measure the
of a millimetre. It works in the reflectance levels emitted from the Earth.
microwave C-band (5.3GHz) These determine the amount of
range of the electromagnetic chlorophyll and sediments in oceans and
spectrum and can operate in coastal waters, and can examine the
a variety of different modes, effectiveness of plant photosynthesis
coverage ranges and angles
MIPAS
DORIS The Michelson Interferometer for
The Doppler Orbitography Passive Atmospheric Sounding
and Radiopositioning (MIPAS) spectrometer works in the
Integrated by Satellite near to mid-infrared wavelengths to
(DORIS) instrument is measure nitrogen dioxide (NO2),
concerned with the accurate nitrous oxide (N2O), ammonia (NH3),
tracking of Envisat, which it nitric acid (HNO3), ozone (O3) and
achieves by measuring water (H2O) in the stratosphere
microwave radio signals
transmitted by 50 ground AATSR
beacons that cover 75% of The Advanced Along Track Scanning
its orbit. By determining its MWR Radiometer (AATSR) is a passive
orbit within ten centimetres The MicroWave Radiometer operates at SCIAMACHY radiometer with a wide-angle lens
(four inches), with an frequencies of 23.8GHz and 36.5GHz. It’s a Scanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric that measures visible and infrared
error of one centimetre, it is nadir-pointing instrument (faces down at CartograpHY measures solar radiation primarily transmitted, emissions from land and ocean
used for navigating the the Earth) that can measure vapour backscattered and reflected in the stratosphere and surfaces. Its measurements of
satellite and calibrating its content of clouds and the atmosphere, as troposphere. By examining UV, visible and near-infrared thermal brightness are accurate to
on-board instruments well as moisture levels of landscapes wavelengths, it detects low concentrations of gases and aerosols at least 0.05°C

he crew of Apollo 8 were the environment, as it is assaulted by to improve these forecasts by In the Seventies, Landsat data about

T first people to see and

photograph our planet as a
globe in its entirety. During the fourth
extremes of natural events and the
impact of human activities.
Observations from space can study
obtaining measurements of the
temperature, pressure and humidity
in different layers of the atmosphere.
the worldwide state of wheat crop
growth was used to forecast yield
rates and stabilise the market for this
orbit around the Moon, Lunar module large patterns of change throughout The success of such satellites led crop, which led to more stable prices
commander William Anders took a the Earth’s surface and in the NASA to launch the Landsat series of for consumers. Using data from
series of photographs of the Earth that atmosphere, and can be used to observation satellites in July 1972. Landsat images, researchers recently
became known as ‘Earthrise’. They supplement information gained by Using multi-spectral scanner discovered 650 previously unknown
revealed the true splenWdour of our ground or ocean-going instruments. instrumentation, Landsats were able barrier islands, including a chain of 54
planet suspended in stark contrast The additional benefit of satellites is to produce images of the Earth’s islands that stretch 563km (350mi)
with the barren lunar surface, and they can transmit data continuously, surface gained from up to eight from the mouth of the Amazon River.
became an icon for showing that our and cover areas of the Earth that are different wavelengths, showing the Satellites save lives and reduce
home is a fertile and fragile dot of life inaccessible or too hostile for any distribution of snow and ice cover, property damage by tracking and
in an immense and deadly universe. other methods of gaining information. vegetation, landscapes, coastal warning of the arrival of hurricanes,
From the Sixties onwards an At first, Earth observation satellites regions and settlements, which tornadoes, floods and other extremes
enormous number of Earth simply used visible light and infrared proved to be a rich source of new data of weather or natural disaster. For
observation satellites have been sensors to monitor the position of for cartography, geology, regional example, in August 2005 satellites
launched to look at the hard facts clouds for weather forecasting. Later, planning, forestry, climate studies provided an accurate early warning of
about the state of our global microwave sensors were introduced and educational purposes. the approach of Hurricane Katrina
 SOLAR SYSTEM

and, a month later, Hurricane Rita. affiliated to agencies that are operating
Unfortunately, responses to these 116 active satellites. These broadly
warnings were slow, resulting in study the long-term and changing
extensive damage and loss of life. global environment from the
Afterwards, satellites (NASA’s TRMM atmosphere, land, ice and snow,
and NOAA’s GOES and POES) provided oceans, gravity and magnetic fields to
imagery of the damaged areas to help the oceans. In the next 15 years, CEOS
in the reconstruction of the areas agencies are planning 260 satellites,
affected. This helped bring about the which will carry 400 instruments to
pledge by nations that operate develop better weather forecasting and
satellites to provide imagery to any knowledge of climate changes.
nation affected by a major disaster Since the Nineties, NASA has run the
under the terms of the International Earth observing system (EOS) program
Disaster Charter. that co-ordinates the activities of its
The sensing technologies used by polar-orbiting satellites to study
satellites consist of optical sensors that “radiation, clouds, water vapour and
can detect the strength of reflections precipitation; the oceans; greenhouse
from the Earth in the visible/near gases; land-surface hydrology and
infrared spectrum and thermal ecosystem processes; glaciers, sea ice

© NASA
infrared rays that are radiated from the and ice sheets; ozone and stratospheric
surface. Microwave sensors can detect chemistry and natural and
radiation in this longer wavelength of anthropogenic aerosols.” To further
NASA’s range of satellites in their Earth observing system (EOS) program includes Terra and
the spectrum coming from the Earth’s this research, it plans to launch 15 a planned launch of Aquarius in June 2011, to measure the salt levels of our oceans. Overall,
surface, or active microwave sensors Earth observation satellites by 2020. they cover every aspect of surface and atmospheric environmental conditions
can send microwaves to the Earth and The European Space Agency also plans
observe their reflections.
Civilian Earth observation satellite
several ‘Earth explorer’ missions,
which includes the launch of three
“To further this research,
surveillance is co-ordinated by the satellites in 2013 to study the Earth’s it plans to launch 15 Earth
committee on Earth observation
satellites (CEOS), which is currently
magnetic field (‘Swarm’) and one to
profile global winds (ADM-Aeolus). observation satellites”
MODIS
The MODerate-resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer gathers data from
36 bands of the electromagnetic
NASA’s Terra satellite
Launched on 18 December 1999, Terra (EOS AM-1) investigates the
spectrum. Its twin-mirror 17.78cm impact of natural and man-made climate changes. It travels in a
(7in) telescope gains data on the
distribution and temperature of
north-to-south, near-polar orbit at an altitude of 705km (438mi),
clouds and water vapour, and marine viewing the entire surface of the Earth every two days
and lower-atmosphere processes as
it passes over the equator at 10.30am ASTER
The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and
Reflection radiometer (ASTER) consists of three
telescopes that during eight minutes of every orbit
acquire high-resolution images of land heights, surface
temperatures, emissions and reflections. They are able
to detect changes in land surfaces and are used to
calibrate data gained by the other Terra instruments

MISR
The Multi-angle Imaging Spectro-
Radiometer (MISR) uses nine digital
cameras pointing at different angles
to obtain images in the blue, green,
red and near-infrared wavelengths
of the electromagnetic spectrum.
They are able to provide monthly
trends in the distribution of aerosol
particles, cloud formations and
seasonal vegetation changes

MOPITT
The Measurements Of Pollution In The
Troposphere (MOPITT) instrument
package measures the amount of carbon
monoxide (CO) in the troposphere by
CERES analysing infrared radiation vertically
The Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) radiating from the Earth. These
uses two identical instruments to determine how clouds measurements enable the production of
influence the flux of thermal radiation from the Earth’s surface to models of the composition and
the top of the atmosphere. One radiometer instrument scans the distribution of fossil fuel consumption
© NASA

Earth across the track of the satellite and the other scans along it and biomass burning on a global scale

016
DID YOU KNOW? Only 24 astronauts have seen the entire Earth from space while on their Apollo missions to the Moon

Which aspects of Earth are Gulf oil spill creeps towards the
Mississippi Delta

the satellites observing?

Atmosphere ICESat image, showing clouds
NASA launched eight Nimbus Earth and aerosols over Africa
observation satellites between 1964
and 1978. They pioneered the use of
‘sounders’ that measure the
humidity and temperature of the

© NASA
atmosphere. They obtain
temperature measurements by Oceans
analysing infrared radiation (IR) on In the Seventies the USA and USSR ran ocean observation
wavelengths linked with oxygen or satellite programmes, which carried synthetic aperture radar
carbon dioxide. IR or microwave (SAR) equipment. A number of radar images are taken by
sounders identify water vapour in SARs and combined to produce a single detailed image. This
the atmosphere to measure is able to determine the height of sea levels, waves, currents
humidity. Microwave sounders and their distribution and can detect oil slicks and shipping
have a lower resolution, but can be movements. The Jason 1 and 2 spacecraft currently use these

© NASA
used in all weather conditions as techniques to study the topography and characteristics of the
they can sound through clouds. oceans, to give a better warning of floods or climate changes.

Land Image using ICESat technology Ice

The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) by Carrying on from the work
the Endeavour space shuttle in February 2000 used of Envisat, which
two radar antennas to produce the most discovered that every
comprehensive hi-res digital topographical map of decade since 1978 the Arctic
the Earth’s terrain. The data is used by Google Earth ice fields have shrunk by
to create maps that can be viewed in 2D or 3D. 2.7%, the European Space
Earth observation satellites are important in Agency launched CryoSat-2
monitoring the seasonal variation of vegetation. on 8 April 2010. It uses radar
Besides studying long-term changes, they are also altimeters with SAR
The red portion of this view of the used to observe and issue warnings of natural technology, specifically
© NASA

US reveals the highest ground disasters such as volcanic eruptions, forest fires designed for its mission to
levels of ultraviolet radiation study the thickness and
and earthquakes.
distribution of ice in the
Perspective view of Santa Barbara, View of Antarctica, showing ice
Radiation generated using data from the shuttle
radar topography mission
sheet elevation and cloud data
polar oceans. NASA’s ICESat
(2004) carried a Geoscience
Visible blue, green and red
Laser Altimeter System
light only provides a limited
(GLAS), which used pulses
amount of information about
of laser light to measure the
the Earth’s surface, so
height and characteristics
satellites use spectrometers to
of Greenland and Antarctic
study the invisible near-
ice fields. These satellites
infrared and infrared parts of
have indicated the role of
the electromagnetic spectrum.
greenhouse gases in the
They can identify and track
polar atmosphere and that
the growth of plant species, as
© NASA

© NASA

the ozone layer has shown

they all reflect infrared light.
signs of recovery.
The infrared ‘fingerprint’ of
plants can also indicate the
amount of water present and Gravity
can warn of potential The European gravity field and steady-state ocean circulation
droughts. Likewise, exposed explorer (GOCE), launched in March 2009, carries an Electrostatic
rocks radiate their own Gravity Gradiometer (EGG) to measure the gravity field of Earth. By
infrared fingerprint that measuring the minute variations in the tug of gravity, it enables the
allows geologists to identify production of Geoid maps of the globe that can indicate ocean
valuable mineral/oil deposits. circulation and changes, the movement and composition of polar ice
Infrared data from satellites sheets and the physics of the Earth’s interior.
is ‘false coloured’, so invisible In March 2002, NASA launched two Gravity Recovery And Climate
light from up to three Experiment (GRACE) spacecraft. They use a microwave system that
wavelengths is rendered into
© NASA

accurately measures any minute changes between their speed and

a combination of visible red, distance, indicating the influence of the Earth’s gravitational pull.
green and blue.

017
 SOLAR SYSTEM

Inside the Sun

The giant star that keeps us all alive…
celestial wonder, the Sun is a huge star formed from a 1,000 kilometers across and which appear across the whole

A massive gravitational collapse when space dust and gas

from a nebula collided, It became an orb 100 times
bigger and weighing over 300,000 times that of Earth. Made up
solar surface.”
At its core, the Sun’s temperature and pressure are so high
and the hydrogen atoms are moving so fast that it causes
of 70 per cent hydrogen and about 28 per cent helium (plus fusion, turning hydrogen atoms into helium. Electromagetic
other gases), the Sun is the centre of our solar system and the raditation travels out from the Sun’s core to its surface,
largest celestial body anywhere near us. escaping into space as electromagnetic radiation, a blinding
“The surface of the Sun is a dense layer of plasma at a light, and incredible levels of solar heat. In fact, the core of the
temperature of 5,800 degrees kelvin that is continually moving Sun is actually hotter than the surface, but when heat escapes
due to the action of convective motions driven by heating from from the surface, the temperature rises to over 1-2 million
below,” says David Alexander, a professor of physics and degrees. Alexander explained that astronomers do not fully
astronomy at Rice University. “These convective motions show understand why the Sun’s atmosphere is so hot, but think it
up as a distribution of what are called granulation cells about has something to do with magnetic fields.

Radiative zone
The first 500,000k of the Sun is a radioactive layer
that transfers energy from the core, mostly toward Beneath the
surface of
the outer layers, passed from atom to atom

Sun’s core
The core of a Sun is
a dense, extremely
hot region – about
the Sun
What is the Sun
15 million degrees
– that produces a
nuclear fusion and
made of?
emits heat through
the layers of the
Sun to the surface Convective zone
The top 30 per cent of
the Sun is a layer of hot
plasma that is
constantly in motion,
heated from below

The Statistics
The Sun
All images courtesy of NASA

Diameter: 100 times Earth

Right conditions Engine room Mass: 300,000 times Earth
The core of the Sun, which acts like a The centre of a star is like an engine Average surface temp:
nuclear reactor, is just the right size room that produces the nuclear fusion 1-2 million degrees
and temperature to product light required for radiation and light Core temp: 15 million degrees

018
DID YOU KNOW? The next total solar eclipse will be in 2090 in the UK

Magnetic influence
How the Sun affects the
Earth’s magnetic field

Solar wind
Solar wind shapes the
Earth’s magnetosphere and
magnetic storms are
illustrated here as
approaching Earth

Plasma release Bow shock line

The Sun’s magnetic field and plasma The purple line is the bow shock line and
releases directly affect Earth and the the blue lines surrounding the Earth represent
rest of the solar system its protective magnetosphere

What is a Solar eclipses

When the Moon blocks out the Sun
solar flare? A solar eclipse is a unique phenomena where the Moon passes
directly into a line between the Earth and the Sun, partially or
A massive explosion, but one that completely blocking our view of the Sun. The Sun is blocked
happens to be several million according to the relative orbits of each celestial body. There
degrees in temperature… are two kinds of eclipses: one where the Moon orbit shows the
outer edge of the Sun, or where the Moon lines up perfectly
“A solar flare is a rapid release of energy in the solar and the Sun is blocked completely from view.
atmosphere (mostly the chromosphere and corona)
resulting in localised heating of plasma to tens of millions
of degrees, acceleration of electrons and protons to high
energies, some to near the speed of light, and expulsion of How big
material into space,” says Alexander. “These
electromagnetic disturbances here on Earth pose
potential dangers for Earth-orbiting satellites, space-
is the
walking astronauts, crews on high-altitude spacecraft,
and power grids on Earth.” Sun?
Our Sun has a
diameter of
1.4 million km
and Earth a
diameter of
Sometimes, the orbits of the Earth and Sun line up
almost
Solar flares can cause geomagnetic storms on the
Sun, including shock waves and plasma expulsions
perfectly so that the Sun is blocked (eclipsed) by the
Moon, shown here with a shadow cast from the
13,000km
eclipse, taken from the ISS

What is a sunspot?
Signifying cooler areas, sunspots show up as dark dots on the
photosphere (the visible layer of plasma across the Sun’s
surface). These ‘cool’ regions – about 1,000 degrees cooler than
the surface temperature – are associated with strong magnetic
fields. Criss-crossing magnetic-field lines can disturb the flow
of heat from the core, creating pockets of intense activity. The
build up of heat around a sunspot can be released as a solar
flare or coronal mass ejection, which is separate to but often If the Sun were the size of a
accompanies larger flares. Plasma from a CME ejects from the basketball, Earth would be a little
Sun at over 1 million miles per hour. dot no more than 2.2 mm

019
 SOLAR SYSTEM

It’s the Sun, but not

as we know it
hese amazing images of the Sun are the first taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics

T Observatory (SDO). Taken on 30 March 2010, this false colour image traces the
Image © NASA

different gas temperatures with reds relatively cool (about 60,000 Kelvin or
107,540 F), while blues and greens are hotter (1 million Kelvin or 1,799,540 F). The SDO
provides images with clarity ten times better than high-definition TV.

020
 DID YOU KNOW? Ancient cultures were often frightened by solar eclipses and attributed them to supernatural beings

This is an image of the

Moon’s transit across the
Sun, taken from NASA’s
STEREO-B spacecraft
Solar eclipse
Solar eclipses occur uring a solar eclipse, the Moon casts

when the Moon D shadows on the Earth known as umbra

or penumbra. The umbra is the darkest
part of the shadow, while the penumbra is the
passes between the area where part of the Moon is blocking the
Sun. Partial eclipses happen when the Sun
Earth and the Sun and Moon are not in perfect alignment – only
the penumbra of the Moon’s shadow passes
over the surface of the Earth. In a total eclipse,
the umbra touches the Earth’s surface.
There are also annular eclipses, in which
both the Sun and the Moon are in alignment
but the Moon appears to be slightly smaller
than the Sun. The Sun appears as a bright ring,
© NASA
or annulus, around the Moon’s profile. The
umbra is still in line with a region on the
Earth’s surface, but the distance is too great to
actually touch the surface of the Earth.
Depending on your location, an eclipse may
appear to be any of the three possible types.
For example, if your region lies in the path of
© NASA

totality, you will experience a total eclipse,

while people in other regions may only see a
partial eclipse. Solar eclipses occur between
The solar eclipse is a truly two and five times per year, with most of these
breathtaking sight being partial or annual eclipses.
Total eclipses have four phases. First contact
occurs when you first notice the shadow of the
Moon on the Sun’s surface. During second
contact, you will observe a phenomenon
called Baily’s beads, when sunlight shines
jaggedly through the rugged peaks and valleys
of the Moon’s surface. When one bead of light
is left, it appears as a single dot in the ring,
known as the diamond ring effect. Next, the
Moon completely covers the Sun’s surface with
The view of the shadow cast by the
only a corona of light showing. The final stage
Moon during a solar eclipse in
1999, taken by the Mir space station is third contact, when the Moon’s shadow
moves away from the Sun.

When the
Moon blocks
out the Sun
The relationship between
the Sun, Moon and Earth
during an eclipse is
geometric

1. Sun 2. Moon 3. Umbra 4. Penumbra 5. Earth

The Sun and the Moon often appear to The magnitude of an eclipse is The umbra is the central area of The penumbra is the outer part of In an annular solar eclipse, the umbra
be the same size, because the ratio the ratio between the angular the shadow of the Moon. If this the Moon’s shadow. You will see a never touches the Earth because the
between their diameters is about the diameters of the Moon and Sun. area passes over you, you’ll see partial eclipse if this part passes Moon is too far away in its orbit. The
same as the ratio between their During a total eclipse this ratio a total eclipse. The sky will be over you and the sky will only be Sun appears as a bright ring around
respective distances from Earth is one or greater completely dark partially dark the Moon’s profile

021
 SOLAR SYSTEM

Solar tornadoes
The story behind twisters on the Sun, a thousand
times larger than their Earthling counterparts
Fiery atmosphere
gigantic sphere of hydrogen plasma poles, as this is where magnetism is most In 2012, small-scale

A (ionised gas), our Sun is by far the most

dominant body in the Solar System and
one of its most visually intense events is the solar
prominent. They exist on other stars as well as the
Sun, burn at over a million degrees Celsius (1.8
million degrees Fahrenheit) and have swirling
magnetic tornadoes were
discovered in the corona
- where temperatures can
reach over a million degrees
- as well as the photosphere
tornado. These twisting magnetic fields are speeds of 10,000 kilometres (6,213 miles) per hour.
between 100 to 1,000 times larger than their They appear in clusters and their main function
equivalents on Earth and have been observed at a is to heat the star’s outer atmosphere by moving
gigantic 70,000 kilometres (43,496 miles) tall. Over energy from the surface to the uppermost layer,
11,000 of these phenomena are on the Sun’s the corona. They generate 100 to 300 watts per
surface at any time and they are believed to square metre (10.8 square feet) and are believed to
potentially be the source of heating for the outer be the reason for the corona’s heat production,
reaches of the Sun and could contribute to auroras which has puzzled scientists and astronomers for
on our planet. generations. Observations from the Swedish 1m
Solar tornadoes differ from Earth-based Solar Telescope in 2008 have increased our Gas twisters
twisters because they are comprised of a understanding of how nature heats magnetised The rotating magnetic
fields of the Sun
magnetic field of plasma. They are more plasma and how the ‘chromospheric swirls’ we generate the ionised
frequently spotted around the Sun’s equator and can see are the result of the tornadoes. gas twisters, creating
its spiral shape

The Swedish 1m Solar

Telescope discovered
chromospheric swirls,
the visible sign of
magnetic
tornadoes

Why is the corona so hot?

A curious anomaly of our nearest star into the corona by wave heating from
is the fact that the corona, an aura of the core. As the corona is dominated
plasma surrounding the star, is hotter by magnetic fields that are constantly
than many other areas of the Sun connecting and engaging with each
closer to its core. The corona can get other, a convection zone is created,
up to two million degrees Celsius (3.6 which releases high amounts of
million degrees Fahrenheit) while on energy and heat. Solar tornadoes are
the surface it is a measly 5,500 linked to the plasma’s astonishing heat
degrees Celsius (9,932 degrees levels as they contribute to coronal
Fahrenheit). Scientists and mass ejections (CME) and the solar
astronomers have long been winds in the Sun’s atmosphere. To
perplexed by this but some new discover more, NASA has planned a
theories might explain why. Recent mission known as the Solar Probe
notions reason that heat is injected Plus, which is pencilled in for 2018.

022
DID YOU KNOW? There are two types of solar tornado: giant and small-scale magnetic

Solar storm
chaser
Dr Sven Wedemeyer-Böhm from the Institute
of Theoretical Astrophysics explains more
How similar are solar tornadoes to
tornadoes on Earth?
Aside from the visible appearance, tornadoes
on Earth and on the Sun are very different
phenomena. In both cases, the tornado funnel
is narrow at the bottom and widens with
height in the atmosphere. Particles inside
tornadoes are forced to move in spirals.
Tornadoes on Earth occur as a result of
temperature and gas pressure differences and
strong shear winds. Solar tornadoes are
generated by rotating magnetic field
structures, which force the plasma, ie the
ionised gas, to move in spirals.

How do solar tornadoes contribute to

auroras on Earth?
It has been speculated that giant tornadoes
may serve as a possible trigger of solar
eruptions, where they build up a magnetic
Solar power field structure until it destabilises and erupts.
This image illustrates a As a consequence, ionised gas could get
giant solar tornado ejected towards Earth, which would then
rather than a smaller contribute to auroras. However, as of now,
chromospheric swirl. there’s no direct connection confirmed.
The latter were only
discovered in 2008 and Do you know about future planned missions
had only been to investigate this phenomenon?
observed in the There are missions such as Solar Orbiter and
photosphere until 2012 Solar-C, which may fly in foreseeable future.
There will be also some major progress with
ground-based observatories with the 4-m
Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST,
formerly the Advanced Technology Solar
Telescope, ATST), which is currently built on
Hawaii, and possibly the 4-m European Solar
Telescope (EST), which may be built in the
future. These new instruments will allow for
an even closer look at our Sun and will enable
us to answer the many open questions that
we still have about solar tornadoes.

What is the primary difference between

giant solar tornadoes and small-scale
magnetic tornadoes?
It is currently not clear if these are different
Far-reaching phenomena or not. Small-scale magnetic
This twister extends all tornadoes have only been observed from the
the way through the Sun’s top so far, ie in the middle of the solar disk,
atmospheric layers from whereas giant tornadoes are seen more
the convection zone all towards the limb of the Sun, in other words:
the way to the outer from the side. In general, magnetic tornadoes
teaches of the corona tend to have somewhat smaller diameters
than giant tornadoes but it is too early to draw
solid conclusions.
© SST/ISP; Wedemeyer-Böhm et al; NASA/SDO

What is the primary difference between

giant solar tornadoes and small-scale
Spiraling out magnetic tornadoes?
of control There are still many questions concerning
Like on Earth, solar solar tornadoes and we hope to address some
tornadoes have a of the most important aspects during the next
narrow funnel at three years in a project, which has just started
the bottom, which at the University of Oslo in collaboration with
widens as it rises international experts.

023
 SOLAR SYSTEM

Exploring
the Moon
We’ve visited the lunar body several times
but it still has many secrets to reveal…

he Moon has been shrouded in that today we call the Moon. Whether the other body in the universe we’ve actually

T mystery since the dawn of time. For a

start, where did it come from? The
popular current hypothesis is the giant
material came from Earth or the planetoid
that caused the impact (or both) is still a matter
of debate.
stood upon.
Thanks to decades of study, we’ve learned a
great deal about our satellite. For example, we
impact theory. The Moon is the second-brightest object in know that the Moon has a differentiated
We’ve learned from dating lunar rocks our sky after the Sun and it has influenced life interior, just like Earth – it contains a core,
that the Moon formed about 4.5 billion years on Earth in countless ways. The gravitational mantle and crust. The core is rich with iron
ago, a good 30-50 million years after the interactions with our world and the Sun give us – solid in the centre and surrounded by a fluid
Solar System. But while the Earth was just ocean tides and lengthen our days by a tiny outer core. The core is small in comparison to
finishing its formation, it was struck by a amount. We’ve also created calendars based the rest of the Moon, however – roughly 350
giant celestial body about the size of Mars, on its phases. Until a Soviet spacecraft landed kilometres (217 miles) thick, about 20 per cent
which has been christened Theia. This on it in 1959, we’d only been able to study the of the Moon’s total size. Surrounding the core
collision blasted material out into space Moon from Earth. Then in 1969, humans is a 500-kilometre (311-mile), partially melted
near the Earth, which coalesced into the body visited the Moon – and it remains the only boundary layer. This is thought to have formed

024
DID YOU KNOW? Smoke and ash from volcanic eruptions on Earth, eg Krakatoa, have actually caused the Moon to appear blue

A closer look at the surface The statistics…

The Moon’s two hemispheres – the one nearest to us and earlier volcanism on the Moon. The far side of our satellite,
the one farthest away, or the ‘dark side’ – have very in contrast, contains almost no maria at all. Both sides of The Moon
different surface features. The nearer side is dominated by our lunar neighbour are covered with impact craters, left Average distance from Earth:
maria and highlands. The maria, or ‘seas’ (so-named by meteors; they can be tiny or many kilometres across. 384,403km (238,857mi)
because early astronomers assumed they were full of Especially strong impacts can leave rays of dust extending Surface temperature:
water) are the darker areas visible from Earth. The lighter hundreds of metres from the crater centre. Mountains and Day: 107°C (224.6°F)
areas are the highlands. Instead of water, the maria are other volcanic features emerged shortly after the Moon’s Night: -153°C (-243°F)
dark because they contain hardened lava, left over from formation, as the surface cooled and buckled. Mean radius:
1,737km (1,079mi)
Mare Orientale Oceanus Archimedes Mare Tranquillitatis Van de Graaff Volume (Earth=1): 0.02 Earths
A distinctive target-ring Procellarum An 83km (51.5mi)- Aka the Sea of Tranquillity; Appears to be two Orbit period; length of lunar
shaped feature, but it’s Aka the Ocean of Storms; diameter impact crater site of Apollo 11 landing craters merged into year: 27.32 Earth days (tidally
tricky to see from Earth site of Apollo 12 landing a figure-of-eight locked)
Rotational period; length of
lunar day: 29.53 Earth days
Mass (Earth=1): 0.0123 Earths
Mean density:
3.344g/cm3 (1.94oz/in3)
Gravity at equator (Earth=1):
0.16 Earths

Bailly Mare Fecunditatis Tsiolkovskiy Fermi Apollo

Tycho A 311km (193mi)-wide An 840km (522mi)-wide 180km (112mi) crater 180km (112mi)-wide crater 537km (334mi) crater made
A relatively young crater crater and the largest lunar mare, aka the Sea of with a prominent known as a walled plain; it up of smaller craters named
(108 million years old) found on the Moon Fecundity, or Fertility central peak is highly eroded after late NASA employees

when a magma ocean in the mantle cooled and There’s a reason why astronauts had to atmosphere and are continually replenished.
crystallised shortly after the Moon’s formation. wear helmets on the Moon – there’s very Oxygen and other neutral elements found on
The mantle is the next layer, a hard and rocky little atmosphere, and what there is doesn’t Earth are present in the regolith, but they
area 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) thick. The contain oxygen, nitrogen or hydrogen; indeed, don’t exist in the atmosphere – probably
Moon’s crust is also rocky, and about 60-100 the atmospheric mass is less than ten metric because the solar wind quickly sweeps them
kilometres (37-62 miles) in thickness. Analysing tons. Since there’s nothing to block the solar out into space.
rocks has shown us that most of the lunar crust wind, it bombards the surface and causes Our Moon is the second-densest to be found
comprises aluminium and titanium, with the sputtering – sprays of particles into the air. The in the Solar System, behind Jupiter’s Io. It’s also
elements pyroxferroite and tranquillityite (first Moon’s surface also experiences outgassing, the fifth largest moon in diameter, only beaten,
seen on the Moon and subsequently found on when volatile gases vent from the interior. in ascending order, by Io (Jupiter), Callisto
Earth) fairly abundant as well. The top layer is These processes contribute sodium, (Jupiter), Titan (Saturn) and Ganymede
© NASA; Reisio

covered with dusty, broken rock that smells a potassium and compounds of argon, radon and (Jupiter). The Moon’s diameter is about
bit like gunpowder and has a snowy texture, polonium, while solar wind contributes one-quarter that of Earth’s, but its mass is just
called regolith. helium-4. All of these have been found in the under 0.0125 Earth masses.

025
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
mixes intimately with the fulness of my impression; speaking not
least, for instance, of the way “the state of the streets” and the assault
of the turbid air seemed all one with the look, the tramp, the whole
quality and allure, the consummate monotonous commonness, of
the pushing male crowd, moving in its dense mass—with the
confusion carried to chaos for any intelligence, any perception; a
welter of objects and sounds in which relief, detachment, dignity,
meaning, perished utterly and lost all rights. It appeared, the muddy
medium, all one with every other element and note as well, all the
signs of the heaped industrial battle-field, all the sounds and
silences, grim, pushing, trudging silences too, of the universal will to
move—to move, move, move, as an end in itself, an appetite at any
price.
In the Bay, the rest of the morning, the dense raw fog that delayed
the big boat, allowing sight but of the immediate ice-masses through
which it thumped its way, was not less of the essence. Anything
blander, as a medium, would have seemed a mockery of the facts of
the terrible little Ellis Island, the first harbour of refuge and stage of
patience for the million or so of immigrants annually knocking at our
official door. Before this door, which opens to them there only with a
hundred forms and ceremonies, grindings and grumblings of the key,
they stand appealing and waiting, marshalled, herded, divided,
subdivided, sorted, sifted, searched, fumigated, for longer or shorter
periods—the effect of all which prodigious process, an intendedly
“scientific” feeding of the mill, is again to give the earnest observer a
thousand more things to think of than he can pretend to retail. The
impression of Ellis Island, in fine, would be—as I was to find
throughout that so many of my impressions would be—a chapter by
itself; and with a particular page for recognition of the degree in
which the liberal hospitality of the eminent Commissioner of this
wonderful service, to whom I had been introduced, helped to make
the interest of the whole watched drama poignant and unforgettable.
It is a drama that goes on, without a pause, day by day and year by
year, this visible act of ingurgitation on the part of our body politic
and social, and constituting really an appeal to amazement beyond
that of any sword-swallowing or fire-swallowing of the circus. The
wonder that one couldn’t keep down was the thought that these two
or three hours of one’s own chance vision of the business were but as
a tick or two of the mighty clock, the clock that never, never stops—
least of all when it strikes, for a sign of so much winding-up, some
louder hour of our national fate than usual. I think indeed that the
simplest account of the action of Ellis Island on the spirit of any
sensitive citizen who may have happened to “look in” is that he
comes back from his visit not at all the same person that he went. He
has eaten of the tree of knowledge, and the taste will be for ever in
his mouth. He had thought he knew before, thought he had the sense
of the degree in which it is his American fate to share the sanctity of
his American consciousness, the intimacy of his American
patriotism, with the inconceivable alien; but the truth had never
come home to him with any such force. In the lurid light projected
upon it by those courts of dismay it shakes him—or I like at least to
imagine it shakes him—to the depths of his being; I like to think of
him, I positively have to think of him, as going about ever afterwards
with a new look, for those who can see it, in his face, the outward
sign of the new chill in his heart. So is stamped, for detection, the
questionably privileged person who has had an apparition, seen a
ghost in his supposedly safe old house. Let not the unwary, therefore,
visit Ellis Island.
The after-sense of that acute experience, however, I myself found,
was by no means to be brushed away; I felt it grow and grow, on the
contrary, wherever I turned: other impressions might come and go,
but this affirmed claim of the alien, however immeasurably alien, to
share in one’s supreme relation was everywhere the fixed element,
the reminder not to be dodged. One’s supreme relation, as one had
always put it, was one’s relation to one’s country—a conception made
up so largely of one’s countrymen and one’s countrywomen. Thus it
was as if, all the while, with such a fond tradition of what these
products predominantly were, the idea of the country itself
underwent something of that profane overhauling through which it
appears to suffer the indignity of change. Is not our instinct in this
matter, in general, essentially the safe one—that of keeping the idea
simple and strong and continuous, so that it shall be perfectly sound?
To touch it overmuch, to pull it about, is to put it in peril of
weakening; yet on this free assault upon it, this readjustment of it in
their monstrous, presumptuous interest, the aliens, in New York,
seemed perpetually to insist. The combination there of their quantity
and their quality—that loud primary stage of alienism which New
York most offers to sight—operates, for the native, as their note of
settled possession, something they have nobody to thank for; so that
unsettled possession is what we, on our side, seem reduced to—the
implication of which, in its turn, is that, to recover confidence and
regain lost ground, we, not they, must make the surrender and
accept the orientation. We must go, in other words, more than half-
way to meet them; which is all the difference, for us, between
possession and dispossession. This sense of dispossession, to be brief
about it, haunted me so, I was to feel, in the New York streets and in
the packed trajectiles to which one clingingly appeals from the
streets, just as one tumbles back into the streets in appalled reaction
from them, that the art of beguiling or duping it became an art to be
cultivated—though the fond alternative vision was never long to be
obscured, the imagination, exasperated to envy, of the ideal, in the
order in question; of the luxury of some such close and sweet and
whole national consciousness as that of the Switzer and the Scot.
 II
My recovery of impressions, after a short interval, yet with their
flush a little faded, may have been judged to involve itself with
excursions of memory—memory directed to the antecedent time—
reckless almost to extravagance. But I recall them to-day, none the
less, for that value in them which ministered, at happy moments, to
an artful evasion of the actual. There was no escape from the
ubiquitous alien into the future, or even into the present; there was
an escape but into the past. I count as quite a triumph in this interest
an unbroken ease of frequentation of that ancient end of Fifth
Avenue to the whole neighbourhood of which one’s earlier
vibrations, a very far-away matter now, were attuned. The precious
stretch of space between Washington Square and Fourteenth Street
had a value, had even a charm, for the revisiting spirit—a mild and
melancholy glamour which I am conscious of the difficulty of
“rendering” for new and heedless generations. Here again the assault
of suggestion is too great; too large, I mean, the number of hares
started, before the pursuing imagination, the quickened memory, by
this fact of the felt moral and social value of this comparatively
unimpaired morsel of the Fifth Avenue heritage. Its reference to a
pleasanter, easier, hazier past is absolutely comparative, just as the
past in question itself enjoys as such the merest courtesy-title. It is all
recent history enough, by the measure of the whole, and there are
flaws and defacements enough, surely, even in its appearance of
decency of duration. The tall building, grossly tall and grossly ugly,
has failed of an admirable chance of distinguished consideration for
it, and the dignity of many of its peaceful fronts has succumbed to
the presence of those industries whose foremost need is to make “a
good thing” of them. The good thing is doubtless being made, and yet
this lower end of the once agreeable street still just escapes being a
wholly bad thing. What held the fancy in thrall, however, as I say,
was the admonition, proceeding from all the facts, that values of this
romantic order are at best, anywhere, strangely relative. It was an
extraordinary statement on the subject of New York that the space
between Fourteenth Street and Washington Square should count for
“tone,” figure as the old ivory of an overscored tablet.
 True wisdom, I found, was to let it, to make it, so count and figure
as much as it would, and charming assistance came for this, I also
found, from the young good-nature of May and June. There had been
neither assistance nor good-nature during the grim weeks of mid-
winter; there had been but the meagre fact of a discomfort and an
ugliness less formidable here than elsewhere. When, toward the top
of the town, circulation, alimentation, recreation, every art of
existence, gave way before the full onset of winter, when the upper
avenues had become as so many congested bottle-necks, through
which the wine of life simply refused to be decanted, getting back to
these latitudes resembled really a return from the North Pole to the
Temperate Zone: it was as if the wine of life had been poured for you,
in advance, into some pleasant old punch-bowl that would support
you through the temporary stress. Your condition was not reduced to
the endless vista of a clogged tube, of a thoroughfare occupied as to
the narrow central ridge with trolley-cars stuffed to suffocation, and
as to the mere margin, on either side, with snow-banks resulting
from the cleared rails and offering themselves as a field for all
remaining action. Free existence and good manners, in New York,
are too much brought down to a bare rigour of marginal relation to
the endless electric coil, the monstrous chain that winds round the
general neck and body, the general middle and legs, very much as the
boa-constrictor winds round the group of the Laocoon. It struck me
that when these folds are tightened in the terrible stricture of the
snow-smothered months of the year, the New York predicament
leaves far behind the anguish represented in the Vatican figures. To
come and go where East Eleventh Street, where West Tenth, opened
their kind short arms was at least to keep clear of the awful hug of
the serpent. And this was a grace that grew large, as I have hinted,
with the approach of summer, and that made in the afternoons of
May and of the first half of June, above all, an insidious appeal.
There, I repeat, was the delicacy, there the mystery, there the
wonder, in especial, of the unquenchable intensity of the impressions
received in childhood. They are made then once for all, be their
intrinsic beauty, interest, importance, small or great; the stamp is
indelible and never wholly fades. This in fact gives it an importance
when a lifetime has intervened. I found myself intimately recognizing
every house my officious tenth year had, in the way of imagined
adventure, introduced to me—incomparable master of ceremonies
after all; the privilege had been offered since to millions of other
objects that had made nothing of it, that had gone as they came; so
that here were Fifth Avenue corners with which one’s connection was
fairly exquisite. The lowered light of the days’ ends of early summer
became them, moreover, exceedingly, and they fell, for the quiet
northward perspective, into a dozen delicacies of composition and
tone.
One could talk of “quietness” now, for the shrinkage of life so
marked, in the higher latitudes of the town, after Easter, the visible
early flight of that “society” which, by the old custom, used never to
budge before June or July, had almost the effect of clearing some of
the streets, and indeed of suggesting that a truly clear New York
might have an unsuspected charm or two to put forth. An approach
to peace and harmony might have been, in a manner, promised, and
the sense of other days took advantage of it to steal abroad with a
ghostly tread. It kept meeting, half the time, to its discomfiture, the
lamentable little Arch of Triumph which bestrides these beginnings
of Washington Square—lamentable because of its poor and lonely
and unsupported and unaffiliated state. With this melancholy
monument it could make no terms at all, but turned its back to the
strange sight as often as possible, helping itself thereby, moreover, to
do a little of the pretending required, no doubt, by the fond theory
that nothing hereabouts was changed. Nothing was, it could
occasionally appear to me—there was no new note in the picture, not
one, for instance, when I paused before a low house in a small row on
the south side of Waverley Place and lived again into the queer
mediæval costume (preserved by the daguerreotypist’s art) of the
very little boy for whom the scene had once embodied the pangs and
pleasures of a dame’s small school. The dame must have been Irish,
by her name, and the Irish tradition, only intensified and coarsened,
seemed still to possess the place, the fact of the survival, the sturdy
sameness, of which arrested me, again and again, to fascination. The
shabby red house, with its mere two storeys, its lowly “stoop,” its
dislocated ironwork of the forties, the early fifties, the record, in its
face, of blistering summers and of the long stages of the loss of self-
respect, made it as consummate a morsel of the old liquor-scented,
heated-looking city, the city of no pavements, but of such a plenty of
politics, as I could have desired. And neighbouring Sixth Avenue,
overstraddled though it might be with feats of engineering unknown
to the primitive age that otherwise so persisted, wanted only, to carry
off the illusion, the warm smell of the bakery on the corner of Eighth
Street, a blessed repository of doughnuts, cookies, cream-cakes and
pies, the slow passing by which, on returns from school, must have
had much in common with the experience of the shipmen of old who
came, in long voyages, while they tacked and hung back, upon those
belts of ocean that are haunted with the balm and spice of tropic
islands.
These were the felicities of the backward reach, which, however,
had also its melancholy checks and snubs; nowhere quite so sharp as
in presence, so to speak, of the rudely, the ruthlessly suppressed
birth-house on the other side of the Square. That was where the
pretence that nearly nothing was changed had most to come in; for a
high, square, impersonal structure, proclaiming its lack of interest
with a crudity all its own, so blocks, at the right moment for its own
success, the view of the past, that the effect for me, in Washington
Place, was of having been amputated of half my history. The grey and
more or less “hallowed” University building—wasn’t it somehow,
with a desperate bravery, both castellated and gabled?—has vanished
from the earth, and vanished with it the two or three adjacent
houses, of which the birthplace was one. This was the snub, for the
complacency of retrospect, that, whereas the inner sense had
positively erected there for its private contemplation a
commemorative mural tablet, the very wall that should have borne
this inscription had been smashed as for demonstration that tablets,
in New York, are unthinkable. And I have had indeed to permit
myself this free fantasy of the hypothetic rescued identity of a given
house—taking the vanished number in Washington Place as most
pertinent—in order to invite the reader to gasp properly with me
before the fact that we not only fail to remember, in the whole length
of the city, one of these frontal records of birth, sojourn, or death,
under a celebrated name, but that we have only to reflect an instant
to see any such form of civic piety inevitably and for ever absent. The
form is cultivated, to the greatly quickened interest of street-scenery,
in many of the cities of Europe; and is it not verily bitter, for those
who feel a poetry in the noted passage, longer or shorter, here and
there, of great lost spirits, that the institution, the profit, the glory of
any such association is denied in advance to communities tending, as
the phrase is, to “run” preponderantly to the sky-scraper? Where, in
fact, is the point of inserting a mural tablet, at any legible height, in a
building certain to be destroyed to make room for a sky-scraper? And
from where, on the other hand, in a façade of fifty floors, does one
“see” the pious plate recording the honour attached to one of the
apartments look down on a responsive people? We have but to ask
the question to recognize our necessary failure to answer it as a
supremely characteristic local note—a note in the light of which the
great city is projected into its future as, practically, a huge,
continuous fifty-floored conspiracy against the very idea of the
ancient graces, those that strike us as having flourished just in
proportion as the parts of life and the signs of character have not
been lumped together, not been indistinguishably sunk in the
common fund of mere economic convenience. So interesting, as
object-lessons, may the developments of the American gregarious
ideal become; so traceable, at every turn, to the restless analyst at
least, are the heavy footprints, in the finer texture of life, of a great
commercial democracy seeking to abound supremely in its own
sense and having none to gainsay it.
Let me not, however, forget, amid such contemplations, what may
serve here as a much more relevant instance of the operation of
values, the price of the as yet undiminished dignity of the two most
southward of the Fifth Avenue churches. Half the charm of the
prospect, at that extremity, is in their still being there, and being as
they are; this charm, this serenity of escape and survival positively
works as a blind on the side of the question of their architectural
importance. The last shade of pedantry or priggishness drops from
your view of that element; they illustrate again supremely your
grasped truth of the comparative character, in such conditions, of
beauty and of interest. The special standard they may or may not
square with signifies, you feel, not a jot: all you know, and want to
know, is that they are probably menaced—some horrible voice of the
air has murmured it—and that with them will go, if fate overtakes
them, the last cases worth mentioning (with a single exception), of
the modest felicity that sometimes used to be. Remarkable certainly
the state of things in which mere exemption from the “squashed”
condition can shed such a glamour; but we may accept the state of
things if only we can keep the glamour undispelled. It reached its
maximum for me, I hasten to add, on my penetrating into the
Ascension, at chosen noon, and standing for the first time in
presence of that noble work of John La Farge, the representation, on
the west wall, in the grand manner, of the theological event from
which the church takes its title. Wonderful enough, in New York, to
find one’s self, in a charming and considerably dim “old” church,
hushed to admiration before a great religious picture; the sensation,
for the moment, upset so all the facts. The hot light, outside, might
have been that of an Italian piazzetta; the cool shade, within, with
the important work of art shining through it, seemed part of some
other-world pilgrimage—all the more that the important work of art
itself, a thing of the highest distinction, spoke, as soon as one had
taken it in, with that authority which makes the difference, ever
afterwards, between the remembered and the forgotten quest. A rich
note of interference came, I admit, through the splendid window-
glass, the finest of which, unsurpassably fine, to my sense, is the
work of the same artist; so that the church, as it stands, is very nearly
as commemorative a monument as a great reputation need wish. The
deeply pictorial windows, in which clearness of picture and fulness of
expression consort so successfully with a tone as of magnified gems,
did not strike one as looking into a yellow little square of the south—
they put forth a different implication; but the flaw in the harmony
was, more than anything else, that sinister voice of the air of which I
have spoken, the fact that one could stand there, vibrating to such
impressions, only to remember the suspended danger, the possibility
of the doom. Here was the loveliest cluster of images, begotten on the
spot, that the preoccupied city had ever taken thought to offer itself;
and here, to match them, like some black shadow they had been
condemned to cast, was this particular prepared honour of “removal”
that appeared to hover about them.
One’s fear, I repeat, was perhaps misplaced—but what an air to live
in, the shuddering pilgrim mused, the air in which such fears are not
misplaced only when we are conscious of very special reassurances!
The vision of the doom that does descend, that had descended all
round, was at all events, for the half-hour, all that was wanted to
charge with the last tenderness one’s memory of the transfigured
interior. Afterwards, outside, again and again, the powers of removal
struck me as looming, awfully, in the newest mass of multiplied
floors and windows visible at this point. They, ranged in this terrible
recent erection, were going to bring in money—and was not money
the only thing a self-respecting structure could be thought of as
bringing in? Hadn’t one heard, just before, in Boston, that the
security, that the sweet serenity of the Park Street Church,
charmingest, there, of aboriginal notes, the very light, with its perfect
position and its dear old delightful Wren-like spire, of the starved
city’s eyes, had been artfully practised against, and that the question
of saving it might become, in the near future, acute? Nothing,
fortunately, I think, is so much the “making” of New York, at its
central point, for the visual, almost for the romantic, sense, as the
Park Street Church is the making, by its happy coming-in, of Boston;
and, therefore, if it were thinkable that the peculiar rectitude of
Boston might be laid in the dust, what mightn’t easily come about for
the reputedly less austere conscience of New York? Once such
questions had obtained lodgment, to take one’s walks was verily to
look at almost everything in their light; and to commune with the
sky-scraper under this influence was really to feel worsted, more and
more, in any magnanimous attempt to adopt the æsthetic view of it. I
may appear to make too much of these invidious presences, but it
must be remembered that they represent, for our time, the only
claim to any consideration other than merely statistical established
by the resounding growth of New York. The attempt to take the
æsthetic view is invariably blighted sooner or later by their most
salient characteristic, the feature that speaks loudest for the
economic idea. Window upon window, at any cost, is a condition
never to be reconciled with any grace of building, and the logic of the
matter here happens to put on a particularly fatal front. If quiet
interspaces, always half the architectural battle, exist no more in
such a structural scheme than quiet tones, blest breathing-spaces,
occur, for the most part, in New York conversation, so the reason is,
demonstrably, that the building can’t afford them. (It is by very much
the same law, one supposes, that New York conversation cannot
afford stops.) The building can only afford lights, each light having a
superlative value as an aid to the transaction of business and the
conclusion of sharp bargains. Doesn’t it take in fact acres of window-
glass to help even an expert New Yorker to get the better of another
expert one, or to see that the other expert one doesn’t get the better
of him? It is easy to conceive that, after all, with this origin and
nature stamped upon their foreheads, the last word of the mercenary
monsters should not be their address to our sense of formal beauty.
 Still, as I have already hinted, there was always the case of the one
other rescued identity and preserved felicity, the happy accident of
the elder day still ungrudged and finally legitimated. When I say
ungrudged, indeed, I seem to remember how I had heard that the
divine little City Hall had been grudged, at a critical moment, to
within an inch of its life; had but just escaped, in the event, the
extremity of grudging. It lives on securely, by the mercy of fate—lives
on in the delicacy of its beauty, speaking volumes again (more
volumes, distinctly, than are anywhere else spoken) for the exquisite
truth of the conferred value of interesting objects, the value derived
from the social, the civilizing function for which they have happened
to find their opportunity. It is the opportunity that gives them their
price, and the luck of there being, round about them, nothing greater
than themselves to steal it away from them. They strike thus,
virtually, the supreme note, and—such is the mysterious play of our
finer sensibility!—one takes this note, one is glad to work it, as the
phrase goes, for all it is worth. I so work the note of the City Hall, no
doubt, in speaking of the spectacle there constituted as “divine”; but
I do it precisely by reason of the spectacle taken with the delightful
small facts of the building: largely by reason, in other words, of the
elegant, the gallant little structure’s situation and history, the way it
has played, artistically, ornamentally, its part, has held out for the
good cause, through the long years, alone and unprotected. The fact
is it has been the very centre of that assault of vulgarity of which the
innumerable mementos rise within view of it and tower, at a certain
distance, over it; and yet it has never parted with a square inch of its
character, it has forced them, in a manner, to stand off. I hasten to
add that in expressing thus its uncompromised state I speak of its
outward, its æsthetic character only. So, at all events, it has
discharged the civilizing function I just named as inherent in such
cases—that of representing, to the community possessed of it, all the
Style the community is likely to get, and of making itself responsible
for the same.
The consistency of this effort, under difficulties, has been the story
that brings tears to the eyes of the hovering kindly critic, and it is
through his tears, no doubt, that such a personage reads the best
passages of the tale and makes out the proportions of the object.
Mine, I recognize, didn’t prevent my seeing that the pale yellow
marble (or whatever it may be) of the City Hall has lost, by some late
excoriation, the remembered charm of its old surface, the pleasant
promiscuous patina of time; but the perfect taste and finish, the
reduced yet ample scale, the harmony of parts, the just proportions,
the modest classic grace, the living look of the type aimed at, these
things, with gaiety of detail undiminished and “quaintness” of effect
augmented, are all there; and I see them, as I write, in that glow of
appreciation which made it necessary, of a fine June morning, that I
should somehow pay the whole place my respects. The simplest, in
fact the only way, was, obviously, to pass under the charming portico
and brave the consequences: this impunity of such audacities being,
in America, one of the last of the lessons the repatriated absentee
finds himself learning. The crushed spirit he brings back from
European discipline never quite rises to the height of the native
argument, the brave sense that the public, the civic building is his
very own, for any honest use, so that he may tread even its most
expensive pavements and staircases (and very expensive, for the
American citizen, these have lately become,) without a question
asked. This further and further unchallenged penetration begets in
the perverted person I speak of a really romantic thrill: it is like some
assault of the dim seraglio, with the guards bribed, the eunuchs
drugged and one’s life carried in one’s hand. The only drawback to
such freedom is that penetralia it is so easy to penetrate fail a little of
a due impressiveness, and that if stationed sentinels are bad for the
temper of the freeman they are good for the “prestige” of the
building.
Never, in any case, it seemed to me, had any freeman made so free
with the majesty of things as I was to make on this occasion with the
mysteries of the City Hall—even to the point of coming out into the
presence of the Representative of the highest office with which City
Halls are associated, and whose thoroughly gracious condonation of
my act set the seal of success upon the whole adventure. Its dizziest
intensity in fact sprang precisely from the unexpected view opened
into the old official, the old so thick-peopled local, municipal world:
upper chambers of council and state, delightfully of their nineteenth-
century time, as to design and ornament, in spite of rank restoration;
but replete, above all, with portraits of past worthies, past celebrities
and city fathers, Mayors, Bosses, Presidents, Governors, Statesmen
at large, Generals and Commodores at large, florid ghosts, looking so
unsophisticated now, of years not remarkable, municipally, for the
absence of sophistication. Here were types, running mainly to
ugliness and all bristling with the taste of their day and the quite
touching provincialism of their conditions, as to many of which
nothing would be more interesting than a study of New York annals
in the light of their personal look, their very noses and mouths and
complexions and heads of hair—to say nothing of their waistcoats
and neckties; with such colour, such sound and movement would the
thick stream of local history then be interfused. Wouldn’t its
thickness fairly become transparent? since to walk through the
collection was not only to see and feel so much that had happened,
but to understand, with the truth again and again inimitably pointed,
why nothing could have happened otherwise; the whole array thus
presenting itself as an unsurpassed demonstration of the real reasons
of things. The florid ghosts look out from their exceedingly gilded
frames—all that that can do is bravely done for them—with the
frankest responsibility for everything; their collective presence
becomes a kind of copious tell-tale document signed with a hundred
names. There are few of these that at this hour, I think, we
particularly desire to repeat; but the place where they may be read is,
all the way from river to river and from the Battery to Harlem, the
place in which there is most of the terrible town.
 III
If the Bay had seemed to me, as I have noted, most to help the
fond observer of New York aspects to a sense, through the eyes, of
embracing possession, so the part played there for the outward view
found its match for the inward in the portentous impression of one of
the great caravansaries administered to me of a winter afternoon. I
say with intention “administered”: on so assiduous a guide, through
the endless labyrinth of the Waldorf-Astoria was I happily to chance
after turning out of the early dusk and the January sleet and slosh
into permitted, into enlightened contemplation of a pandemonium
not less admirably ordered, to all appearance, than rarely
intermitted. The seer of great cities is liable to easy error, I know,
when he finds this, that or the other caught glimpse the supremely
significant one—and I am willing to preface with that remark my
confession that New York told me more of her story at once, then and
there, than she was again and elsewhere to tell. With this
apprehension that she was in fact fairly shrieking it into one’s ears
came a curiosity, corresponding, as to its kind and its degree of
interest; so that there was nought to do, as we picked our tortuous
way, but to stare with all our eyes and miss as little as possible of the
revelation. That harshness of the essential conditions, the outward,
which almost any large attempt at the amenities, in New York, has to
take account of and make the best of, has at least the effect of
projecting the visitor with force upon the spectacle prepared for him
at this particular point and of marking the more its sudden high
pitch, the character of violence which all its warmth, its colour and
glitter so completely muffle. There is violence outside, mitigating
sadly the frontal majesty of the monument, leaving it exposed to the
vulgar assault of the street by the operation of those dire facts of
absence of margin, of meagreness of site, of the brevity of the block,
of the inveteracy of the near thoroughfare, which leave “style,” in
construction, at the mercy of the impertinent cross-streets, make
detachment and independence, save in the rarest cases, an insoluble
problem, preclude without pity any element of court or garden, and
open to the builder in quest of distinction the one alternative, and
the great adventure, of seeking his reward in the sky.
Of their licence to pursue it there to any extent whatever New
Yorkers are, I think, a trifle too assertively proud; no court of
approach, no interspace worth mention, ever forming meanwhile
part of the ground-plan or helping to receive the force of the
breaking public wave. New York pays at this rate the penalty of her
primal topographic curse, her old inconceivably bourgeois scheme of
composition and distribution, the uncorrected labour of minds with
no imagination of the future and blind before the opportunity given
them by their two magnificent water-fronts. This original sin of the
longitudinal avenues perpetually, yet meanly intersected, and of the
organized sacrifice of the indicated alternative, the great perspectives
from East to West, might still have earned forgiveness by some
occasional departure from its pettifogging consistency. But, thanks to
this consistency, the city is, of all great cities, the least endowed with
any blest item of stately square or goodly garden, with any happy
accident or surprise, any fortunate nook or casual corner, any
deviation, in fine, into the liberal or the charming. That way,
however, for the regenerate filial mind, madness may be said to lie—
the way of imagining what might have been and putting it all
together in the light of what so helplessly is. One of the things that
helplessly are, for instance, is just this assault of the street, as I have
called it, upon any direct dealing with our caravansary. The electric
cars, with their double track, are everywhere almost as tight a fit in
the narrow channel of the roadway as the projectile in the bore of a
gun; so that the Waldorf-Astoria, sitting by this absent margin for life
with her open lap and arms, is reduced to confessing, with a strained
smile, across the traffic and the danger, how little, outside her mere
swing-door, she can do for you. She seems to admit that the attempt
to get at her may cost you your safety, but reminds you at the same
time that any good American, and even any good inquiring stranger,
is supposed willing to risk that boon for her. “Un bon mouvement,
therefore: you must make a dash for it, but you’ll see I’m worth it.” If
such a claim as this last be ever justified, it would indubitably be
justified here; the survivor scrambling out of the current and up the
bank finds in the amplitude of the entertainment awaiting him an
instant sense as of applied restoratives. The amazing hotel-world
quickly closes round him; with the process of transition reduced to
its minimum he is transported to conditions of extraordinary
complexity and brilliancy, operating—and with proportionate
perfection—by laws of their own and expressing after their fashion a
complete scheme of life. The air swarms, to intensity, with the
characteristic, the characteristic condensed and accumulated as he
rarely elsewhere has had the luck to find it. It jumps out to meet his
every glance, and this unanimity of its spring, of all its aspects and
voices, is what I just now referred to as the essence of the loud New
York story. That effect of violence in the whole communication, at
which I thus hint, results from the inordinate mass, the quantity of
presence, as it were, of the testimony heaped together for emphasis
of the wondrous moral.
The moral in question, the high interest of the tale, is that you are
in presence of a revelation of the possibilities of the hotel—for which
the American spirit has found so unprecedented a use and a value;
leading it on to express so a social, indeed positively an æsthetic
ideal, and making it so, at this supreme pitch, a synonym for
civilization, for the capture of conceived manners themselves, that
one is verily tempted to ask if the hotel-spirit may not just be the
American spirit most seeking and most finding itself. That truth—the
truth that the present is more and more the day of the hotel—had not
waited to burst on the mind at the view of this particular
establishment; we have all more or less been educated to it, the
world over, by the fruit-bearing action of the American example: in
consequence of which it has been opened to us to see still other
societies moved by the same irresistible spring and trying, with
whatever grace and ease they may bring to the business, to unlearn
as many as possible of their old social canons, and in especial their
old discrimination in favour of the private life. The business for them
—for communities to which the American ease in such matters is not
native—goes much less of itself and produces as yet a scantier show;
the great difference with the American show being that in the United
States every one is, for the lubrication of the general machinery,
practically in everything, whereas in Europe, mostly, it is only certain
people who are in anything; so that the machinery, so much less
generalized, works in a smaller, stiffer way. This one caravansary
makes the American case vivid, gives it, you feel, that quantity of
illustration which renders the place a new thing under the sun. It is
an expression of the gregarious state breaking down every barrier
but two—one of which, the barrier consisting of the high pecuniary
tax, is the immediately obvious. The other, the rather more subtle, is
the condition, for any member of the flock, that he or she—in other
words especially she—be presumably “respectable,” be, that is, not
discoverably anything else. The rigour with which any appearance of
pursued or desired adventure is kept down—adventure in the florid
sense of the word, the sense in which it remains an euphemism—is
not the least interesting note of the whole immense promiscuity.
Protected at those two points the promiscuity carries, through the
rest of the range, everything before it.
It sat there, it walked and talked, and ate and drank, and listened
and danced to music, and otherwise revelled and roamed, and
bought and sold, and came and went there, all on its own splendid
terms and with an encompassing material splendour, a wealth and
variety of constituted picture and background, that might well feed it
with the finest illusions about itself. It paraded through halls and
saloons in which art and history, in masquerading dress, muffled
almost to suffocation as in the gold brocade of their pretended
majesties and their conciliatory graces, stood smirking on its passage
with the last cynicism of hypocrisy. The exhibition is wonderful for
that, for the suggested sense of a promiscuity which manages to be at
the same time an inordinate untempered monotony; manages to be
so, on such ground as this, by an extraordinary trick of its own,
wherever one finds it. The combination forms, I think, largely, the
very interest, such as it is, of these phases of the human scene in the
United States—if only for the pleasant puzzle of our wondering how,
when types, aspects, conditions, have so much in common, they
should seem at all to make up a conscious miscellany. That question,
however, the question of the play and range, the practical elasticity,
of the social sameness, in America, will meet us elsewhere on our
path, and I confess that all questions gave way, in my mind, to a
single irresistible obsession. This was just the ache of envy of the
spirit of a society which had found there, in its prodigious public
setting, so exactly what it wanted. One was in presence, as never
before, of a realized ideal and of that childlike rush of surrender to it
and clutch at it which one was so repeatedly to recognize, in America,
as the note of the supremely gregarious state. It made the whole
vision unforgettable, and I am now carried back to it, I confess, in
musing hours, as to one of my few glimpses of perfect human felicity.
It had the admirable sign that it was, precisely, so comprehensively
collective—that it made so vividly, in the old phrase, for the greatest
happiness of the greatest number. Its rare beauty, one felt with
instant clarity of perception, was that it was, for a “mixed” social
manifestation, blissfully exempt from any principle or possibility of
disaccord with itself. It was absolutely a fit to its conditions, those
conditions which were both its earth and its heaven, and every part
of the picture, every item of the immense sum, every wheel of the
wondrous complexity, was on the best terms with all the rest.
The sense of these things became for the hour as the golden glow
in which one’s envy burned, and through which, while the sleet and
the slosh, and the clangorous charge of cars, and the hustling,
hustled crowds held the outer world, one carried one’s charmed
attention from one chamber of the temple to another. For that is how
the place speaks, as great constructed and achieved harmonies
mostly speak—as a temple builded, with clustering chapels and
shrines, to an idea. The hundreds and hundreds of people in
circulation, the innumerable huge-hatted ladies in especial, with
their air of finding in the gilded and storied labyrinth the very
firesides and pathways of home, became thus the serene faithful,
whose rites one would no more have sceptically brushed than one
would doff one’s disguise in a Mohammedan mosque. The question
of who they all might be, seated under palms and by fountains, or
communing, to some inimitable New York tune, with the shade of
Marie Antoinette in the queer recaptured actuality of an easy
Versailles or an intimate Trianon—such questions as that, interesting
in other societies and at other times, insisted on yielding here to the
mere eloquence of the general truth. Here was a social order in
positively stable equilibrium. Here was a world whose relation to its
form and medium was practically imperturbable; here was a
conception of publicity as the vital medium organized with the
authority with which the American genius for organization, put on its
mettle, alone could organize it. The whole thing remains for me,
however, I repeat, a gorgeous golden blur, a paradise peopled with
unmistakable American shapes, yet in which, the general and the
particular, the organized and the extemporized, the element of
ingenuous joy below and of consummate management above, melted
together and left one uncertain which of them one was, at a given
turn of the maze, most admiring. When I reflect indeed that without
my clue I should not have even known the maze—should not have
known, at the given turn, whether I was engulfed, for instance, in the
vente de charité of the theatrical profession and the onset of
persuasive peddling actresses, or in the annual tea-party of German
lady-patronesses (of I know not what) filling with their Oriental
opulence and their strange idiom a playhouse of the richest rococo,
where some other expensive anniversary, the ball of a guild or the
carouse of a club, was to tread on their heels and instantly mobilize
away their paraphernalia—when I so reflect I see the sharpest dazzle
of the eyes as precisely the play of the genius for organization.
There are a thousand forms of this ubiquitous American force, the
most ubiquitous of all, that I was in no position to measure; but there
was often no resisting a vivid view of the form it may take, on
occasion, under pressure of the native conception of the hotel.
Encountered embodiments of the gift, in this connection, master-
spirits of management whose influence was as the very air, the very
expensive air, one breathed, abide with me as the intensest examples
of American character; indeed as the very interesting supreme
examples of a type which has even on the American ground,
doubtless, not said its last word, but which has at least treated itself
there to a luxury of development. It gives the impression, when at all
directly met, of having at its service something of that fine flame that
makes up personal greatness; so that, again and again, as I found,
one would have liked to see it more intimately at work. Such failures
of opportunity and of penetration, however, are but the daily bread
of the visionary tourist. Whenever I dip back, in fond memory, none
the less, into the vision I have here attempted once more to call up, I
see the whole thing overswept as by the colossal extended arms,
waving the magical baton, of some high-stationed orchestral leader,
the absolute presiding power, conscious of every note of every
instrument, controlling and commanding the whole volume of
sound, keeping the whole effect together and making it what it is.
What may one say of such a spirit if not that he understands, so to
speak, the forces he sways, understands his boundless American
material and plays with it like a master indeed? One sees it thus, in
its crude plasticity, almost in the likeness of an army of puppets
whose strings the wealth of his technical imagination teaches him
innumerable ways of pulling, and yet whose innocent, whose always
ingenuous agitation of their members he has found means to make
them think of themselves as delightfully free and easy. Such was my
impression of the perfection of the concert that, for fear of its being
spoiled by some chance false note, I never went into the place again.
It might meanwhile seem no great adventure merely to walk the
streets; but (beside the fact that there is, in general, never a better
way of taking in life), this pursuit irresistibly solicited, on the least
pretext, the observer whose impressions I note—accustomed as he
had ever been conscientiously to yield to it: more particularly with
the relenting year, when the breath of spring, mildness being really
installed, appeared the one vague and disinterested presence in the
place, the one presence not vociferous and clamorous. Any definite
presence that doesn’t bellow and bang takes on in New York by that
simple fact a distinction practically exquisite; so that one goes forth
to meet it as a guest of honour, and that, for my own experience, I
remember certain aimless strolls as snatches of intimate communion
with the spirit of May and June—as abounding, almost to
enchantment, in the comparatively still condition. Two secrets, at
this time, seemed to profit by that influence to tremble out; one of
these to the effect that New York would really have been “meant” to
be charming, and the other to the effect that the restless analyst,
willing at the lightest persuasion to let so much of its ugliness edge
away unscathed from his analysis, must have had for it, from far
back, one of those loyalties that are beyond any reason.
“It’s all very well,” the voice of the air seemed to say, if I may so
take it up; “it’s all very well to ‘criticize,’ but you distinctly take an
interest and are the victim of your interest, be the grounds of your
perversity what they will. You can’t escape from it, and don’t you see
that this, precisely, is what makes an adventure for you (an
adventure, I admit, as with some strident, battered, questionable
beauty, truly some ‘bold bad’ charmer), of almost any odd stroll, or
waste half-hour, or other promiscuous passage, that results for you
in an impression? There is always your bad habit of receiving
through almost any accident of vision more impressions than you
know what to do with; but that, for common convenience, is your
eternal handicap and may not be allowed to plead here against your
special responsibility. You care for the terrible town, yea even for the
‘horrible,’ as I have overheard you call it, or at least think it, when
you supposed no one would know; and you see now how, if you fly