Quotation from: The Notebooks of Leonardo Da VinciWritten by: Leonardo da Vinci |
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I. THE STARS. On the light of the stars (911-913). 911. The stars are visible by night and not by day, because we are eneath the dense atmosphere, which is full of innumerable articles of moisture, each of which independently, when the ays of the sun fall upon it, reflects a radiance, and so these umberless bright particles conceal the stars; and if it were not or this atmosphere the sky would always display the stars against ts darkness. [Footnote: See No. 296, which also refers to starlight.] 912. Whether the stars have their light from the sun or in themselves. Some say that they shine of themselves, alledging that if Venus nd Mercury had not a light of their own, when they come between ur eye and the sun they would darken so much of the sun as they ould cover from our eye. But this is false, for it is proved that dark object against a luminous body is enveloped and entirely oncealed by the lateral rays of the rest of that luminous body nd so remains invisible. As may be seen when the sun is seen hrough the boughs of trees bare of their leaves, at some distance he branches do not conceal any portion of the sun from our eye. he same thing happens with the above mentioned planets which, hough they have no light of their own, do not--as has been said-- onceal any part of the sun from our eye [18].
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