Quotation from: The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci

Written by: Leonardo da Vinci


_The ingenious theory by which he tries to explain the nature of
what is known as earth shine, the reflection of the sun's rays by
the earth towards the moon, saying that it is a peculiar refraction,
originating in the innumerable curved surfaces of the waves of the
sea may be regarded as absurd; but it must not be forgotten that he
had no means of detecting the fundamental error on which he based
it, namely: the assumption that the moon was at a relatively short
distance from the earth. So long as the motion of the earth round
the sun remained unknown, it was of course impossible to form any
estimate of the moon's distance from the earth by a calculation of
its parallax_.

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