The starry skies : or, First lessons on the sun, moon and stars by Agnes Giberne
The starry skies by Agnes Giberne is a popular-astronomy primer written in the late 19th century. Aimed chiefly at young readers, it introduces the Earth, Moon, Sun, and stars through vivid analogies, simple experiments, and end‑of‑chapter questions. It lays out fundamentals such as Earth’s sphericity and horizons, gravity and weight, day and night from Earth’s rotation, the Moon’s distance, phases, and synchronous spin, and the Sun’s immense scale and stellar nature, with
an occasional devotional tone. The opening of the book explains that Earth is a sphere without “ends,” illustrates horizons and curvature (ships “hull-down”), and shows why people on the opposite side don’t fall off—because of universal attraction or gravitation defining “up” and “down” locally. It contrasts the vast distances we see in space with the short vistas on Earth, then describes daily and seasonal sky motions: the Sun’s rising in the east and setting in the west, equinoxes and solstices, the zenith, and stars’ apparent east‑to‑west sweep, all traced to Earth’s 24‑hour spin on its axis. The text establishes scale with clear models (Moon one inch across, Earth four inches, ten feet apart; Sun a 35‑foot “balloon” three‑quarters of a mile away), explains moonlight as reflected sunlight, and demonstrates lunar phases, Earth‑shine, and why the Moon shows one face due to matching rotation and orbit, yielding fortnight‑long lunar days and nights. Through the telescope it depicts a stark, airless Moon with sharp shadows, great cratered ranges, intense cold, and lower gravity, then turns to the Sun as a true star—self‑luminous, colossal, and distant—introducing sunspots and their role in revealing the Sun’s rotation. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Giberne, Agnes, 1845-1939 |
|---|---|
| LoC No. | 06009993 |
| Title | The starry skies : or, First lessons on the sun, moon and stars |
| Original Publication | New York: American Tract Society, 1894. |
| Credits | Alan, The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | QB: Science: Astronomy |
| Subject | Astronomy -- Juvenile literature |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 77859 |
| Release Date | Feb 4, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 251 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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