Читать книгу Star-land: Being Talks With Young People About the Wonders of the Heavens онлайн

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We shall, therefore, prepare to make observations from that very particular spot on this earth—the North Pole. I suppose that eternal ice and snow abide there. I don’t think it would be a pleasant residence. However, we shall arrange to arrive on Midsummer Day, prepared to make a year’s sojourn. The first question to be settled is the erection of the hut. In a cold country it is important to give the right aspect, and we are in the habit of saying that a southerly aspect is the best and warmest, while the north and the east are suggestive only of chills and discomfort. But what is a southerly aspect at the North Pole, or, rather, what is not a southerly aspect? Whatever way we look from the North Pole we are facing due south. There is no such thing as east or west; every way is the southward way. This is truly an odd part of the earth. The only other locality at all resembling it would be the South Pole, from which all directions would be north.

The sun would be moving all through the day in a fashion utterly unlike its behavior in our latitudes. There would, of course, be no such thing as rising and setting. The sun would, indeed, at first seem neither to go any nearer to the horizon nor to rise any higher above it, but would simply go round and round the sky. Then it would gradually get lower and lower, moving round day after day in a sort of spiral, until at last it would get down so low that it would just graze the horizon, right round which it would circulate till half the sun was below, and then until the whole disk had disappeared. Even though the sun had now vanished, a twilight glow would for some time be continuous. It would seem to come from a source moving round and round below the horizon, then gradually the light would become fainter and fainter until at last the winter of utter and continuous blackness had set in. The first indications of the return of spring would be detected by a feeble glow near the horizon, which would seem to move round and round day after day. Then this glow would pass into a continuous dawn, gradually increasing until the sun’s edge crept into visibility, and the great globe would at last begin to climb the heavens by its continual spiral until midsummer was reached, when the change would go on again as before.