La Lune, terre d'avenir

An encyclopedic introduction to the Moon for the general reader, La Lune, terre d'avenir is the sixth and thoroughly revised edition of a work first published in 1943 under the title Notre amie la Lune. Across six chapters, Pierre Rousseau covers the descriptive astronomy of the Moon, its relationship with the Earth (eclipses, tides, librations), the history of lunar cartography from Galileo to the 1960s, debates over the volcanic or meteoric origin of surface features, evidence of variable phenomena (glows, colour changes) and the question of a residual atmosphere, and finally the prospect of lunar conquest in the context of the Soviet and American space programmes.