midnight
The portion of the moon which the projectile was nearing was the northern hemisphere , that which the selenographic maps place below ; for these maps are generally drawn after the outline given by the glasses , and we know that they reverse the objects . Such was the _ Mappa Selenographica _ of Boeer and Moedler which Barbicane consulted . This northern hemisphere presented vast plains , dotted with isolated mountains . At midnight the moon was full . At that precise moment the travelers should have alighted upon it , if the mischievous meteor had not diverted their course . The orb was exactly in the condition determined by the Cambridge Observatory . It was mathematically at its perigee , and at the zenith of the twenty-eighth parallel .