313 quotes found
"Mars aeternum."
"Mars is there, waiting to be reached."
"Fly me to the moon And let me play among the stars Let me know what Spring is like On Jupiter and Mars In other words, hold my hand In other words, darling kiss me."
"When President Bush called in 1989 for a manned mission to Mars on the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Apollo landing, he got the estimated bill from NASA: 450 billion dollars. The sticker shock killed Bush’s initiatives in Congress. The price was high because everyone in NASA and their parasite companies tacked every conceivable extra onto the mission."
"[Y]ou drive all night and then you see a light And it comes right down and it lands on the ground And out comes the man from Mars And you try to run but he's got a gun And he shoots you dead and he eats your head And then you're in the man from Mars You go out at night eating cars..."
"[In 2057] we should be celebrating 20 years of man on Mars."
"Know you why the robin's breast Gleameth of a dusky red Like the lustre mid the stars Of the potent planet Mars?"
"Mars is too cold, Venus is too hot, Earth is just right."
"I want to fly away. (Yeah Yeah Yeah) Let's go to see the starsthe Milky Way, and even Marswhere it could be just ours."
"Mars is way more hostile than you can imagine. It’s colder than Antarctica, has less air than the top of Mount Everest, is drier than the Mojave, and is harder to get to than the bottom of the Marianas Trench."
"The Mars we had found was just a big moon with a thin atmosphere and no life. There were no martians, no canals, no water, no plants, no surface characteristics that even faintly resembled Earth's."
"Mars is essentially in the same orbit... Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
"I don't know why you're on Mars. Maybe you're there because we recognize we have to carefully move small asteroids around to avert the possibility of one impacting the Earth with catastrophic consequences, and while we're up in near-Earth space, it's only a hop, skip, and a jump to Mars. Or maybe we're on Mars because we recognize that if there are human communities on many different worlds, the chances of us being rendered extinct by some catastrophe on one world is much less. Or maybe we're on Mars because of the magnificent science that can be done there, that the gates of the wonder world are opening in our time. Or maybe we're on Mars because we have to be, because there's a deep nomadic impulse built into us by the evolutionary process. We come, after all, from hunter-gatherers, and for 99.9% of our tenure on Earth we've been wanderers. And, the next place to wander to is Mars. But whatever the reason you're on Mars is, I'm glad you're there. And I wish I was with you."
"I’m surprised to see people get so wildly excited about a possible bacterium on Mars when our own planet is crawling with undiscovered species."
"Thou art the Mars of malcontents."
""And in that hope, dear soul, let trouble have rest, Knowing I tarry for thee," and pointed to Mars, As he glow’d like a ruddy shield on the Lion’s breast."
"She saw the snowy poles of moonless Mars"
"Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make. Incredible as it may seem, strange beings who landed in New Jersey tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from Mars."
"It is known that there is an infinite number of worlds, but that not every one is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so if every planet in the Universe has a population of zero then the entire population of the Universe must also be zero, and any people you may actually meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination."
"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas-covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think that this to be the normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."
"The important achievement of Apollo was demonstrating that humanity is not forever chained to this planet and our visions go rather further than that and our opportunities are unlimited."
"I remember on the trip home on Appolo 11, it suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small."
"Outside intelligences, exploring the solar system with true impartiality, would be quite likely to enter the sun in their records thus: Star X, spectral class G0, 4 planets plus debris."
"Gauss calculated the elements of the planet Ceres and his analysis proved him to be the first of theoretical astronomers no less than the greatest of 'arithmeticians.'"
"The only truly alien planet is Earth."
"The fact that this chain of life existed [at volcanic vents on the seafloor] in the black cold of the deep sea and was utterly independent of sunlight—previously thought to be the font of all Earth's life—has startling ramifications. If life could flourish there, nurtured by a complex chemical process based on geothermal heat, then life could exist under similar conditions on planets far removed from the nurturing light of our parent star, the Sun."
"Copernicus, who rightly did condemn This oldest system, form'd a wiser scheme; In which he leaves the Sun at Rest, and rolls The orb terrestrial on its proper poles; Which makes the night and day by this career, And by its slow and crooked course the year. The famous Dane, who oft the modern guides, To earth and sun their Provinces divides: The earth's rotation makes the night and day, The sun revolving through th'eccliptic way Effects the various seasons of the year, Which in their turn for happy ends appear. This scheme or that, which pleases best, embrace, Still we the fountain of their motion trace. Kepler asserts these wonders may be done By the magnetic vertue of the sun, Which he, to gain his end, thinks fit to place Full in the center of that mighty space, Which does the spheres, where planets roll, include, And leaves him with attractive force endu'd. The sun, thus seated, by mechanic laws, The earth, and every distant planet draws; By which attraction all the planets found Within his reach, are turn'd in ether round."
"That the machine of Heaven is not a hard and impervious body full of various real spheres, as up to now has been believed by most people. It will be proved that it extends everywhere, most fluid and simple, and nowhere presents obstacles as was formerly held, the circuits of the Planets being wholly free and without the labour and whirling round of any real spheres at all, being divinely governed under a given law."
"There really are not any spheres in the heavens ... Those which have been devised by the experts to save the appearances exist only in the imagination, for the purpose of enabling the mind to conceive the otion which the heavenly bodies trace in their course and, by the aid of geometry, to determine the motion numerically through the use of arithmetic."
"I would like to start by emphasizing the importance of surfaces. It is at a surface where many of our most interesting and useful phenomena occur. We live for example on the surface of a planet. It is at a surface where the catalysis of chemical reactions occur. It is essentially at a surface of a plant that sunlight is converted to a sugar. In electronics, most if not all active circuit elements involve non-equilibrium phenomena occurring at surfaces. Much of biology is concerned with reactions at a surface."
"In space there are countless constellations, suns and planets; we see only the suns because they give light; the planets remain invisible, for they are small and dark. There are also numberless earths circling around their suns, no worse and no less than this globe of ours. For no reasonable mind can assume that heavenly bodies that may be far more magnificent than ours would not bear upon them creatures similar or even superior to those upon our human earth."
"The Builder of this Universe was wise, He plann’d all souls, all systems, planets, particles: The Plan He shap'd all Worlds and Æons by, Was—Heavens!—was thy small Nine-and-thirty Articles!"
"Most known extrasolar planets (exoplanets) have been discovered using the radial velocity, or transit methods. Both are biased towards planets that are relatively close to their parent stars, and studies find that around 17–30% of solar-like stars host a planet. Gravitational microlensing, on the other hand, probes planets that are further away from their stars. Recently, a population of planets that are unbound or very far from their stars was discovered by microlensing. These planets are at least as numerous as the stars in the Milky Way."
"It’s so hard to balance in our minds the knowledge that ‘the world’ is mundanely ‘a planet.’ The former is so holy; the latter merely a science project."
"We will look upon the earth and her sister planets as being with us, not for us."
"And the mass starts into a million suns; Earths round each sun with quick explosions burst, And second planets issue from the first."
"In 1684 Dr Halley came to visit him at Cambridge, after they had been some time together, the Dr asked him what he thought the Curve would be that would be described by the Planets supposing the force of attraction towards the Sun to be reciprocal to the square of their distance from it. Sir Isaac replied immediately that it would be an Ellipsis, the Doctor struck with joy & amazement asked him how he knew it, why saith he I have calculated it, whereupon Dr Halley asked him for his calculation without any farther delay. Sr Isaac looked among his papers but could not find it, but he promised him to renew it, & then to send it him."
"From an entertainment point of view, the Solar System has been a bust. None of the planets turns out to have any real-estate potential, and most of them are probably even useless for filming Dune sequels."
"But what exceeds all wonders, I have discovered four new planets and observed their proper and particular motions, different among themselves and from the motions of all the other stars; and these new planets move about another very large star [Jupiter] like Venus and Mercury, and perchance the other known planets, move about the Sun. As soon as this tract, which I shall send to all the philosophers and mathematicians as an announcement, is finished, I shall send a copy to the Most Serene Grand Duke, together with an excellent spyglass, so that he can verify all these truths."
"The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do."
"I had rather be Mercury, the smallest among seven [planets], revolving round the sun, than the first among five [moons] revolving round Saturn."
"We see it [the as-yet unseen, hypothetical new planet, Neptune] as Columbus saw America from the coast of Spain. Its movements have been felt, trembling along the far-reaching line of our analysis with a certainty hardly inferior to that of ocular demonstration."
"I shall explain a System of the World differing in many particulars from any yet known, answering in all things to the common Rules of Mechanical Motions: This depends upon three Suppositions. First, That all Cœlestial Bodies whatsoever, have an attraction or gravitating power towards their own Centers, whereby they attract not only their own parts, and keep them from flying from them, as we may observe the Earth to do, but that they do also attract all the other Cœlestial bodies that are within the sphere of their activity; and consequently that not only the Sun and Moon have an influence upon the body and motion the Earth, and the Earth upon them, but that Mercury also Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter by their attractive powers, have a considerable influence upon its motion in the same manner the corresponding attractive power of the Earth hath a considerable influence upon every one of their motions also. The second supposition is this, That all bodies whatsoever that are put into a direct and simple motion, will continue to move forward in a straight line, till they are by some other effectual powers deflected and bent into a Motion, describing a Circle, Ellipse, or some other more compounded Curve Line. The third supposition is: That these attractive powers are so much the more powerful in operating, by how much the nearer the body wrought upon is to their own Centers. Now what these several degrees are I have not yet experimentally verified; but it is a notion, which if fully prosecuted as it ought to be, will mightily assist the Astronomer to reduce all the Cœlestial Motions to a certain rule, which I doubt will never be done true without it. He that understands the nature of the Circular Pendulum and Circular Motion, will easily understand the whole ground of this Principle, and will know where to find direction in Nature for the true stating thereof. This I only hint at present to such as have ability and opportunity of prosecuting this Inquiry, and are not wanting of Industry for observing and calculating, wishing heartily such may be found, having myself many other things in hand which I would first complete and therefore cannot so well attend it. But this I durst promise the Undertaker, that he will find all the Great Motions of the World to be influenced by this Principle, and that the true understanding thereof will be the true perfection of Astronomy."
"A rock or stone is not a subject that, of itself, may interest a philosopher to study; but, when he comes to see the necessity of those hard bodies, in the constitution of this earth, or for the permanency of the land on which we dwell, and when he finds that there are means wisely provided for the renovation of this necessary decaying part, as well as that of every other, he then, with pleasure, contemplates this manifestation of design, and thus connects the mineral system of this earth with that by which the heavenly bodies are made to move perpetually in their orbits."
"The art itself cannot philosophise While man does that, and sees, and keeps a wife And flies, and talks, and is extremely wise... Will our Philosophy to later Life Seem but a crudeness of the planet's youth, Our Wisdom but a parasite of Truth?"
"Damn the Solar System. Bad light; planets too distant; pestered with comets; feeble contrivance; could make a better myself."
"I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours."
"And if you want the exact moment in time, it was conceived mentally on 8th March in this year one thousand six hundred and eighteen, but submitted to calculation in an unlucky way, and therefore rejected as false, and finally returning on the 15th of May and adopting a new line of attack, stormed the darkness of my mind. So strong was the support from the combination of my labour of seventeen years on the observations of Brahe and the present study, which conspired together, that at first I believed I was dreaming, and assuming my conclusion among my basic premises. But it is absolutely certain and exact that the proportion between the periodic times of any two planets is precisely the sesquialterate proportion of their mean distances."
"Knox was engaged in a theological discussion with scientist John Scott Haldane. 'In a universe containing millions of planets,' reasoned Haldane, 'is it not inevitable that life should appear on at least one of them?' 'Sir,' replied Knox, 'if Scotland Yard found a body in your cabin trunk, would you tell them: 'There are millions of trunks in the world; surely one of them must contain a body? I think the would still want to know who put it there.'"
"The historian of science may be tempted to claim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them. Led by a new paradigm, scientists adopt new instruments and look in new places. even more important, during revolutions, scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before. It is rather as if the professional community had been suddenly transported to another planet where familiar objects are seen in a different light and are joined by unfamiliar ones as well."
"I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet."
"Faustus: How many heavens or spheres are there? Mephastophilis: Nine: the seven planets, the firmament, and the empyreal heaven. Faustus: But is there not coelum igneum, et crystallinum? Meph.: No Faustus, they be but fables. Faustus: Resolve me then in this one question: Why are not conjunctions, oppositions, aspects, eclipses all at one time, but in some years we have more, in some less? Meph.: Per inaequalem motum respectu totius. Faustus: Well, I am answered. Now tell me who made the world. Meph.: I will not. Faustus: Sweet Mephastophilis, tell me. Meph.: Move me not, Faustus. Faustus: Villain, have I not bound thee to tell me any thing? Meph.: Ay, that is not against our kingdom. This is. Thou are damn'd, think thou of hell. Faustus: Think, Faustus, upon God that made the world! Meph.: Remember this. Faustus: Ay, go, accursed spirit, to ugly hell!‘Tis thou has damned distressed Faustus’s soul. Is’t not too late."
"On a perfect planet such as might be acceptable to a physicist, one might predict that from its origin the diversity of life would grow exponentially until the carrying capacity, however defined, was reached. The fossil record on Earth, however, tells a very different story."
"For nature is a perpetual circulatory worker, generating fluids out of solids, and solids out of fluids, fixed things out of volatile, & volatile out of fixed, subtle out of gross, & gross out of subtle, Some things to ascend & make the upper terrestrial juices, rivers and the atmosphere; & by consequence others to descend for a requital to the former. And as the earth, so perhaps may the sun imbibe this spirit copiously to conserve his shining, & keep the Planets from receding further from him. And they that will, may also suppose, that this spirit affords or carries with it thither the solary fuel & material principle of light; And that the vast aethereal spaces between us, & the stars are for a sufficient repository for this food of the sun and planets."
"Thus far I have explained the phenomena of the heavens and of our sea by the force of gravity, but I have not yet assigned a cause to gravity. Indeed, this force arises from some cause that penetrates as far as the centers of the sun and planets without any diminution of its power to act, and that acts not in proportion to the quantity of the surfaces of the particles on which it acts (as mechanical causes are wont to do) but in proportion to the quantity of solid matter, and whose action is extended everywhere to immense distances, always decreasing as the squares of the distances."
"Seeing therefore the variety of Motion which we find in the World is always decreasing, there is a necessity of conserving and recruiting it by active Principles, such as are the cause of Gravity, by which Planets and Comets keep their Motions in their Orbs, and Bodies acquire great Motion in falling; and the cause of Fermentation, by which the Heart and Blood of Animals are kept in perpetual Motion and Heat; the inward Parts of the Earth are constantly warm'd, and in some places grow very hot; Bodies burn and shine, Mountains take fire, the Caverns of the Earth are blown up, and the Sun continues violently hot and lucid, and warms all things by his Light. For we meet with very little Motion in the World, besides what is owing to these active Principles. And it were not for these Principles the Bodies of the Earth, Planers, Comets, Sun, and all things in them would grow cold and freeze and become inactive masses; and all Putrefaction, Generation, Vegetation and Life would cease; and the Planets and Comets would not remain in their Orbs."
"That the squares of the periodic times are proportion to the cubes of the major-axes. These laws were discovered by Kepler from observations made on Mars and stated by analogy as general laws, which, although not rigidly true, are sufficiently near to the truth to have led to the discovery of the law of attraction of the bodies of the solar system. The deviation from complete accuracy is due to the facts, that the planets are not of inappreciable mass, that, in consequence, they disturb each other's orbits about the Sun, and, by their action on the Sun itself, cause the periodic time of each to be shorter than if the Sun were a fixed body, in the subduplicate ratio of the mass of the Sun to the sum of the masses of the Sun and Planet; these errors are appreciable although very small, since the mass of the largest of the planets, Jupiter, is less than 1/1000th of the Sun's mass."
"The spirits survey the heavens and the earth and all the harmonious motions of the universe. They see the heavenly bodies set in revolving whorls, which, whorl within whorl, combine to form the Spinning-whorl on the Spindle of Necessity; and the Goddess holds the spindle on her knee, and spins the thread which the Fates wind, unwind and cut. The heavenly bodies, or the spheres or whorls in which they lie, are arranged one within another in the following order: 1. The Fixed Stars. 2. Saturn. 3. Jupiter. 4. Mars. 5. Mercury. 6. Venus. 7. The Sun. 8. The Moon. This order is as good as any other that can be framed under a geocentric hypothesis."
"The whorls differ from one another in respect of "breadth of rim", the first and outermost whorl is that which has its circular rim the broadest, and the sixth whorl comes next to it in regard to breadth of rim; and, proceeding in order of breadth, the fourth whorl comes third, and the eighth fourth, and the seventh fifth, and the fifth sixth, and the third seventh, and the second eighth.' Thus we have now a new classification of the heavenly bodies, in the following sequence: 1. The Fixed Stars. 2. Venus. 3. Mars. 4. The Moon. 5. The Sun. 6. Mercury. 7. Jupiter. 8. Saturn."
"That very law which moulds a tear, And bids it trickle from its source; That law preserves the earth a sphere, And guides the planets in their course."
"If we lived on a planet where nothing ever changed, there would be little to do. There would be nothing to figure out. There would be no impetus for science. And if we lived in an unpredictable world, where things changed in random or very complex ways, we would not be able to figure things out. But we live in an in-between universe, where things change, but according to patterns, rules, or as we call them, laws of nature. If I throw a stick up in the air, it always falls down. If the sun sets in the west, it always rises again the next morning in the east. And so it becomes possible to figure things out. We can do science, and with it we can improve our lives."
"The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home."
"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost between two spiral arms in the outskirts of a galaxy, tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."
"This is the excellent foppery of the world: that when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeits of our own behaviour—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence, and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon's tail and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows that I am rough and lecherous. Fut! I should have been that I am had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing."
"...extending through all space, and compelling to their proper orbits, the planets, struggling fierce towards heaven's free wilderness."
"Astronomy may be revolutionized more than any other field of science by observations from above the atmosphere. Study of the planets, the Sun, the stars, and the rarified matter in space should all be profoundly influenced by measurements from balloons, rockets, probes and satellites....In a new adventure of discovery no one can foretell what will be found, and it is probably safe to predict that the most important new discovery that will be made with flying telescopes will be quite unexpected and unforeseen."
"If we imagine an observer to approach our planet from outer space, and, pushing aside the belts of red-brown clouds which obscure our atmosphere, to gaze for a whole day on the surface of the earth as it rotates beneath him, the feature, beyond all others most likely to arrest his attention would be the wedge-like outlines of the continents as they narrow away to the South."
"We are prone to forget that the planet may be measured by man, but not according to man."
"This world was once a fluid haze of light, Till toward the centre set the starry tides, And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast The planets: then the monster, then the man."
"...the life of the planet began the long, slow process of modulating and regulating the physical conditions of the planet. The oxygen in today's atmosphere is almost entirely the result of photosynthetic living, which had its start with the appearance of blue-green algae among the microorganisms."
"I am entitled to say, if I like, that awareness exists in all the individual creatures on the planet—worms, sea urchins, gnats, whales, subhuman primates, superprimate humans, the lot. I can say this because we do not know what we are talking about: consciousness is so much a total mystery for our own species that we cannot begin to guess about its existence in others."
"From the rocket we can see the huge sphere of the planet in one or another phase of the Moon. We can see how the sphere rotates, and how within a few hours it shows all its sides successively … and we shall observe various points on the surface of the Earth for several minutes and from different sides very closely. This picture is so majestic, attractive and infinitely varied that I wish with all my soul that you and I could see it."
"This success permits us to hope that after thirty or forty years of observation on the new Planet [Neptune], we may employ it, in its turn, for the discovery of the one following it in its order of distances from the Sun. Thus, at least, we should unhappily soon fall among bodies invisible by reason of their immense distance, but whose orbits might yet be traced in a succession of ages, with the greatest exactness, by the theory of Secular Inequalities."
"I tell my students, with a feeling of pride that I hope they will share, that the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen that make up ninety-nine per cent of our living substance were cooked in the deep interiors of earlier generations of dying stars. Gathered up from the ends of the universe, over billions of years, eventually they came to form, in part, the substance of our sun, its planets, and ourselves. Three billion years ago, life arose upon the earth. It is the only life in the solar system."
"Scientists themselves readily admit that they do not fully understand the consequences of our many-faceted assault upon the interwoven fabric of atmosphere, water, land and life in all its biological diversity. But things could also turn out to be worse than the current scientific best guess. In military affairs, policy has long been based on the dictum that we should be prepared for the worst case. Why should it be so different when the security is that of the planet and our long-term future?"
"One of the grandest generalizations formulated by modern biological science is that of the continuity of life; the protoplasmic activity within each living body now on earth has continued without cessation from the remote beginnings of life on our planet, and from that period until the present no single organism has ever arisen save in the form of a bit of living protoplasm detached from a pre-existing portion; the eternal flame of life once kindled upon this earth has passed from organism to organism, and is still, going on existing and propagating, incarnated within the myriad animal and plant forms of everyday life."
"A time will come when men will stretch out their eyes. They should see planets like our Earth."
"Dilbert: And we know mass creates gravity because more dense planets have more gravity. Dogbert: How do we know which planets are more dense? Dilbert: They have more gravity. Dogbert: That's circular reasoning. Dilbert: I prefer to think of it as having no loose ends."
"[In 1958] some astronomers thought that Venus might have a rotation period near the 24-hour mark, as Earth and Mars do. In that case, the microwave emission might be quite copious even from the dark side, since that would have been exposed to the Sun a few hours before. In that case, microwave emission might indicate a roughly Earthlike temperature, since the fact that Venus is closer to the Sun might be balanced by the fact that its cloud layer reflects most of the sunlight it receives. Well, [[w:Cornell Mayer|[Cornell] Mayer]] did detect the microwave radiation from Venus and he did not get either expected alternative. He did not get a very low temperature of a dark side that never sees the Sun, nor did he get an Earthlike temperature, nor, for that matter, anything between. Instead, he got a flood of microwave radiation that indicated a temperature of at least 300° C, some two hundred degrees above the boiling point of water. It was a thunderbolt. No one had expected such a hot Venus."
"Fair Venus shines Even in the eye of day; with sweetest beam Propitious shines, and shakes a trembling flood Of softened radiance with her dewy locks. The shadows spread apace; while meekened Eve, Her cheek yet warm with blushes, slow retires Through the Hesperian gardens of the west, And shuts the gates of day."
"Thou fair-hair’d angel of the evening, Now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, light Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!"
"Counting stars by candlelight All are dim but one is bright: The spiral light of Venus Rising first and shining best Oh, from the northwest corner Of a brand-new crescent moon Crickets and cicadas sing A rare and different tune"
"I think it is a sad reflection on our civilization that while we can and do measure the temperature in the atmosphere of Venus we do not know what goes on inside our soufflés."
"Venus, unlike the Earth, has a hellish temperature. Venus is farther from the Sun than Mercury but is even hotter. The high temperature is due to an extreme greenhouse effect, the process by which the atmospheric gases raise the temperature by absorbing outward flowing heat. Earth’s atmosphere may once have contained large amounts of carbon dioxide, the way Venus’s atmosphere does now. But on earth, the oceans absorbed much of carbon dioxide, so that gas could not trap as much heat in the atmosphere as it does on Venus. ... Venus is earth’s “evil twin”. It’s about the same size as earth, but with deadly heat and pressure, an unbreathable atmosphere, and highly acid rain."
"Erstwhile the star of dawn thy light on living men was shed; But now in death an evening star, thou’rt light among the dead."
"Chemistry dissolves the goddess in the alembic, Venus the white queen, the universal matrix, Down to molecular hexagons and carbon-chains."
"Some scientists believe that until about 500 million years ago the Venus surface was almost entirely devoid of landforms. Streams and oceans of molten rock were relentlessly pouring out of the interior filling in and covering over any relief that had managed to form."
"Venus has about 90 times more air than Earth. It isn't mainly oxygen and nitrogen as here — it's carbon dioxide. But carbon dioxide doesn't absorb visible light either. What would the sky look like from the surface of Venus if Venus had no clouds? With so much atmosphere in the way, not only are violet and blue waves scattered, but all other colours as well — green, yellow, orange, red. The air is so thick, though, that hardly any blue light makes it to the ground; it’s scattered back to space by successive bounces higher up. Thus the light that does reach the ground should be strongly reddened — like an Earth sunset all over the sky. Further sulfur in the high clouds will strain the sky yellow. Pictures taken by the Soviet Venera landers confirm that the skies of Venus are a kind of yellow-orange."
"Those who are skeptical about carbon dioxide greenhouse warming might profitably note the massive greenhouse effect on Venus. No one proposes that Venus's greenhouse effect derives from imprudent Venusians who burned too much coal, drove fuel-inefficient autos, and cut down their forests."
"Thou, Hesper, bringest homeward all That radiant dawn sped far and wide: The sheep to fold, the goat to stall, The children to their mother’s side."
"For a breeze of morning moves, And the planet of Love is on high, Beginning to faint in the light that she loves On a bed of daffodil sky, To faint in the light of the sun she loves, To faint in his light, and to die."
"The universe is hilarious! Like, Venus is 900 degrees. I could tell you it melts lead. But that's not as fun as saying, 'You can cook a pizza on the windowsill in nine seconds.' And next time my fans eat pizza, they're thinking of Venus!"
"The Venus transit is not a spectacle the way a total solar eclipse is a spectacle."
"There are certain calculations I should like to make with you, To be sure that your deductions will be logical and true; And remember, 'Patience, Patience,' is the watchword of a sage, Not to-day nor yet to-morrow can complete a perfect age. I have sown, like Tycho Brahé, that a greater man may reap; But if none should do my reaping, 'twill disturb me in my sleep So be careful and be faithful, though, like me, you leave no name; See, my boy, that nothing turn you to the mere pursuit of fame.I must say Good-bye, my pupil, for I cannot longer speak; Draw the curtain back for Venus, ere my vision grows too weak: It is strange the pearly planet should look red as fiery Mars,— God will mercifully guide me on my way amongst the stars."
"What strong allurement draws, what spirit guides, Thee, Vesper! brightening still, as if the nearer Thou com'st to man's abode the spot grew dearer Night after night?"
"For me Venus holds special fascination because of it many close connections to Earth, and the important role it has played in our changing ideas about the universe and our place in it. It is brightest thing in our night sky, after the full moon, and has long attracted human worship, fear, and calculation. A slightly twin to our planet in size and weight, Venus (as we have learnt recently) is also currently active planet with a churning interior, young surface and continually recycling atmosphere. It is in many ways the most Earth like of other planets and a natural laboratory for studying some of the most crucial environmental tests facing us."
"As Venus moves up and down through our twilight skies, the farthest it gets from the Sun is an angle of about 47 degrees. (This is "maximum elongation")"
"You can feel when you are locked in resonance in a circle of drummers playing parts complimentary to yours. Venus and Earth have been locked in this same way, beating five against eight, for billions of years. There is no accepted physical explanation for the Venus-Earth five/eight polyrhythm. Some regard it as merely a coincidence, noting that the correspondence is not exact (it is actually off by two days of 2,820). But I suspect that this close rhythmic connection between the orbits of Venus and Earth goes back to the time when the planets were being formed from collisions between smaller “planetesimals”."
"The great beauty and striking presence of Venus led to an association by the Greeks with Aphrodite, goddess of beauty and love. Inanna, Ishtar, Astarte and Venus are other names given to variations of this goddess in Western history, all associated with the planet. A knowledge of close coincidence between the cycles of Venus and human pregnancy may have contributed to the persistent, but nonexclusive of female characteristic to Venus. Western attributes The Venus de Milo and Botticelli's Birth of Venus (popularly known as Venus on the Half Shell) are icons of this imagery in Western culture."
"Maya felt that we owed our existence to Venus who they called Kukulcan and their astronomer-priests repaid the debt with the blood of human sacrifice. Unfortunately, almost everything we know about the Maya’s sophisticated and complex system of Venus observations/ computations/prediction/worship comes from only four books that escaped the book-burning frenzy of the invading Christians. Included in this meticulously painted bark paper books is an abundance of astronomical information, including table of solar and lunar motions and table of Venus ephemeris, or table of motions, which is accurate for over a hundred years. The entire Mayan calendar, as were those of all Mesoamerican civilizations, was based on the 260-days Venus appearance interval. The 260-day Mayan calendar is still in use today in many areas of Guatemala. The 260-day Venus interval and the 365-day year come into phase every 18,980 days, or 53 years."
"[L]et's trace the origin and history of the popular vision of Venus as Earth's soggy twin. The striking brilliance that makes Venus such a noticeable presence in our sky results paradoxically from the same feature that long kept her cloaked in mystery. The planet is completely shrouded in clouds that reflect nearly 80 percent of the Sun’s light back into space, making Venus the brightest of worlds."
"Venus, all you need to do is identify some feature or mark and note the time it takes to reappear, as it rotates around the globe. Beginning in 1666, Cassini made the first attempt to do this. He found a rotation period of 23 hours and 21 minutes. In 1789, Schroder refined this estimate to 23 hours, 21 minutes, and 19 seconds."
"For Venus is (as was well known by early telescopic observers) literally right next door. The closest planet to Earth, at every inferior conjunction she swings to within one hundred times the Moon's distance."
"In 1956, passive radio observations had allowed a startling discovery that led to the first serious challenge to the fantasies of a warm, wet Venus. Mysteriously, the planet was emitting very large amounts of microwave radiation. Further observations in the 1960s confirmed its brightness when viewed with microwave eyes."
"As long as Venus remained an object of distant observation in our sky, there was no way to be sure, and science fiction writers were free to populate Venus with ocean-dwelling beasts and evil dictators (news of the problematical microwaves was first published the same year that Zsa Zsa was thrilling audiences with her Venusian antics). We had to go there to demand some answers. This is where the rockets enter the story... the cold-war “space race” was on, science was along for the ride, onward to the planets."
"Venus was the target for the first spacecraft sent from Earth to another planet, Mariner 2 was launched on August 27, 1962."
"[T]hroughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s our understanding of Venus slowly increased in depth and sophistication. But still the clouds did not clear, and major mysteries remained. The early Soviet efforts produced a string of failures...Venera 3 — actually reached Venus only to crash into the planet on March 1, 1966...the first successful mission Venera 4, reached Venus in October 1967 — first planetary probe to enter the atmosphere of another planet, do direct experiments and radio home the results...During its brief (ninety-four –minute) decent by parachute, the spacecraft measured conditions in and below the clouds, confirming that the atmosphere of Venus is mostly carbon dioxide and recording increasing temperature and pressure...at an altitude of more than sixteen miles."
"On Earth, only dust and pebbles get snuffed (making "shooting stars"), but on Venus you don't get any craters smaller than about two miles across. We expected this. In fact, the small size cutoff of craters conforms so closely to pre-Magellan predictions that it was a confidence booster for our models of the passage of small bodies through planetary atmospheres."
"But on Venus you can't tell, so the hypothesis is consistent with the way all the craters sit atop the "paint job" of planet wide lava flows. Unfortunately, this scenario is only slightly more plausible than crater-worshiping."
"Venus should have a similar overall heat production, and it has to be losing this heat somehow. It can't be holding it inside because the whole planet would just be molten. It is not enough to simply pronounce that Venus looks different from Earth so it does not have plate tectonics. We have to find some cooling mechanism."
"We are just starting to think about how similar feed backs between the surface and atmosphere may be affecting the climate on Venus. Although the Magellan mission was mostly about the surface, it has caused us to rethink much of what we thought we knew about the atmosphere."
"Mars is the most Earthlike of the other planets in its surface conditions, but Venus may be the most Earthlike in its activity. All three planets started out young and restless, with warm, churning interiors and water flowing on their surfaces. But they have gone their separate ways. Mars cooled off...Venus, too, lost its ocean, but it retains an active churning interior and a surface that has been reworked many times by processes that are apparently still ongoing."
"The star [Tycho's supernova] was at first like Venus and Jupiter, giving pleasing effects; but as it then became like Mars, there will next come a period of wars, seditions, captivity and death of princes, and destruction of cities, together with dryness and fiery meteors in the air,pestilence, and venomous snakes. Lastly, the star became like Saturn, and there will finally come a time of want, death, imprisonment and all sorts of sad things."
"I wol yow telle, as was me taught also, The foure spirites and the bodies sevene, By ordre, as ofte I herde my lord hem nevene. The firste spirit quiksilver called is, The seconde orpyment, the thridde, ywis, Sal armonyak, and the firthe brimstoon. The bodys sevene eek, lo! hem heer anoon: Sol gold is, and Luna silver we threpe, Mars iren, Mercurie quyksilver we clepe, Saturnus leed, and Jupiter is tyn, And Venus coper, by my fader kyn!"
"The universe is globe-shaped, either because that is the most perfect shape of all, needing no joint, an integral whole; or because that is the most capacious of shapes, which is most fitting because it is to contain and preserve all...The first and highest of all is the sphere of the fixed stars, which contains itself and all things, and is therefore motionless. It is the location of the universe, to which the motion and position of all the remaining stars is referred. For though some consider that it also changes in some respect, we shall assign another cause for its appearing to do so in our deduction of the Earth's motion. There follows Saturn, the first of the wandering stars, which completes its circuit in thirty years. After it comes Jupiter which moves in a twelve-year long revolution. Next is Mars, which goes round biennially. An annual revolution holds the fourth place, in which as we have said is contained the Earth along with the lunar sphere which is like an epicycle. In fifth place Venus returns every nine months. Lastly, Mercury holds the sixth place, making a circuit in the space of eighty days. In the middle of all is the seat of the Sun. For who in this most beautiful of temples would put this lamp in any other or better place than the one from which it can illuminate everything at the same time? Aptly indeed is he named by some the lantern of the universe, by others the mind, by others the ruler. Trismegistus called him the visible God, Sophocles' Electra, the watcher over all things. Thus indeed the Sun as if seated on a royal throne governs his household of Stars as they circle around him. Earth also is by no means cheated of the Moon's attendance, but as Aristotle says in his book On Animals the Moon has the closest affinity with the Earth. Meanwhile the Earth conceives from the Sun, and is made pregnant with annual offspring. We find, then, in this arrangement the marvellous symmetry of the universe, and a sure linking together in harmony of the motion and size of the spheres, such as could be perceived in no other way. For here one may understand, by attentive observation, why Jupiter appears to have a larger progression and retrogression than Saturn, and smaller than Mars, and again why Venus has larger ones than Mercury; why such a doubling back appears more frequently in Saturn than in Jupiter, and still more rarely in Mars and Venus than in Mercury; and furthermore why Saturn, Jupiter and Mars are nearer to the Earth when in opposition than in the region of their occultation by the Sun and re-appearance. Indeed Mars in particular at the time when it is visible throughout the night seems to equal Jupiter in size, though marked out by its reddish colour; yet it is scarcely distinguishable among stars of the second magnitude, though recognized by those who track it with careful attention."
"We find then in this arrangement an admirable harmony of the world, and a dependable, harmonious interconnexion of the motion and the size of the paths, such as otherwise cannot be discovered. For here the penetrating observer can note why the forward and the retrograde movement of Jupiter appears greater than that of Saturn, and smaller than that of Mars, and again greater with Venus than with Mercury; and why such retrogression appears oftener with Saturn than with Jupiter, less often with Mars and Venus than with Mercury. Moreover, why Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars, when they rise in the evening, appear greater than when they disappear and reappear [with the sun]...And all this results from the same cause, namely the motion of the earth."
"In awe, I watched the waxing moon ride across the zenith of the heavens like an ambered chariot towards the ebony void of infinite space wherein the tethered belts of Jupiter and Mars hang, for ever festooned in their orbital majesty. And as I looked at all this I thought... I must put a roof on this toilet."
"Formation of the Solar System: Every 12 years Jupiter returns to the same position in the sky; every 370 days it disappears in the fire of the Sun in the evening to the west, 30 days later it reappears in the morning to the east"
"Jupiter was very large and bright. Apparently, there was a small reddish star appended to its side. This is called “an alliance.”"
"The experiments that we will do with the LHC [Large Hadron Collider] have been done billions of times by cosmic rays hitting the earth.... They're being done continuously by cosmic rays hitting our astronomical bodies, like the moon, the sun, like Jupiter and so on and so forth. And the earth's still here, the sun's still here, the moon's still here. LHC collisions are not going to destroy the planet."
"How much more passion than reason has Jupiter composed us? putting in, as one would say, “scarce half an ounce to a pound."
"The vastness of heavens stretches my imagination...Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?"
"I therefore concluded, and decided unhesitatingly, that there are three stars in the heavens moving about Jupiter, as Venus and Mercury about the Sun; which at length was established as clear as daylight by numerous other observations. These observations also established that there are not only three, but four, erratic sidereal bodies performing their revolutions round Jupiter."
"A Dalit needs the escape velocity of Jupiter to achieve success."
"We know that the sun is hub to our little corner of the universe, and that ties of genealogy connect all living things on our planet, because these theories assemble and explain so much otherwise disparate and unrelated information — not because Galileo trained his telescope on the moons of Jupiter or because Darwin took a ride on a Galapagos tortoise."
"Galileo claimed to have seen mountains on the Moon, to have proved the Milky Way was made up of tiny stars, and to have seen four small bodies orbiting Jupiter. These last, with an eye to getting a position in Florence, he quickly named 'the Mediciean Stars. But when all was finished, no one besides my brother could get a glimpse of Jupiter or Saturn, for the great length of the tube would not allow it to be kept in a straight line. This difficulty, however, was soon removed by substituting tin tubes."
"How much are we really in duty bound to pin our faith to ? Who will guarantee me that on Jupiter two and two do not make five?"
"The Solar System consists of eight "planets" Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. A new distinct class of objects called "dwarf planets" exist. "Planets" and "dwarf planets" are two distinct classes of objects. The first members of the "dwarf planet" category are Ceres, Pluto and 2003 UB313 (temporary name)."
"For the planets round about him (the Sun), as though he were their king, lead on their dance, at appointed distances pursue their orbits at the utmost harmony....If, however, he should have nothing in common with them, except this power of doing good, which communicates unto all, then we ought to acquiesce in the reasoning of the Egyptian priests, who raise altars to the Sun conjointly with Jupiter ; nay, rather we should assent to Apollo himself (long before them), who sits on the same throne with Jove, and whose words are, " One Jove, one Pluto, one Sun is Serapis. From which we must conclude that the sovereignty of the Sun and of Jupiter amongst the deities that are objects of intellect is held in common, or rather is one and the same."
"The orbit of the earth is a circle; round the spheres to which this circle belongs describe a dodecahedron; the spheres including this will give the orbit of Mars. Round Mars describe a tetrahedron; the circle including this will be orbit of Jupiter. Describe a cube round Jupiter’s orbit; the circle including this will be Saturn. Now, inscribe in the earth’s orbit an icosahedron, the circle inscribed in it will be the orbit of Venus: inscribe an octahedron in the orbit of Venus: the circle inscribed in it will be Mercury’s orbit. This is the reason of number of planets."
"I might then reap the rare reward of becoming famous, like the man who discovered the spots on Jupiter. I prefer, however, to keep silent."
"Quem Deus vult perdere. All the time when I look at my countrymen, my mind exclaims in amazement "Whom Jupiter wishes to destroy, he first sends mad"."
"The earth's becoming at a particular period the residence of human beings, was an era in the moral, not in the physical world, that our study and contemplation of the earth, and the laws which govern its animate productions, ought no more to be considered in the light of a disturbance or deviation from the system, than the discovery of the satellites of Jupiter should be regarded as a physical event in the history of those heavenly bodies, however influential they may have become from that time in advancing the progress of sound philosophy among men."
"The word planet comes from the Greek for “wanderer,” because the planets' positions change relative to those of the stars. The eight (formerly nine) recognized planets that orbit the Sun are, in order of increasing distance, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The first four are called terrestrial planets and the next four giant, or Jovian, planets."
"Science is the part of NASA that's actually conducting interesting and scientifically important missions. Spacecraft sent to Mars, Saturn, Mercury, the Moon, comets, and asteroids have been making incredible discoveries, with more to come from recent launches to Jupiter, the Moon, and Mars. The country needs more of these robotic space exploration missions, not less."
"This [Diamond] gem is appropriate as first half of Leo’ precious crystal, because Jupiter, the mutable influence on the sign at this point, seems, when viewed from Earth, to give off a yellow light."
"The Spirits survey the heavens and the earth and all the harmonious motions of the universe. They see the heavenly bodies set in revolving whorls, which, whorl within whorl, combine to form the Spinning-whorl on the Spindle of Necessity; and the Goddess holds the spindle on her knee, and spins the thread which the Fates wind, unwind and cut. The heavenly bodies, or the spheres or whorls in which they lie, are arranged one within another in the following order: 1. The Fixed Stars. 2. Saturn. 3. Jupiter. 4. Mars. 5. Mercury. 6. Venus. 7. The Sun. 8. The Moon. This order is as good as any other that can be framed under a geocentric hypothesis"
"As the whorls differ from one another in respect of “ breadth of rim”, the first and outermost whorl is that which has its circular rim the broadest, and the sixth whorl comes next to it in regard to breadth of rim; and, proceeding in order of breadth, the fourth whorl comes third, and the eighth fourth, and the seventh fifth, and the fifth sixth, and the third seventh, and the second eighth.' Thus we have now a new classification of the heavenly bodies, in the following sequence: 1. The Fixed Stars. 2. Venus. 3. Mars. 4. The Moon. 5. The Sun. 6. Mercury. 7. Jupiter. 8. Saturn."
"Consider now the Milky Way. Here also we see an innumerable dust, only the grains of this dust are no longer atoms but stars; these grains also move with great velocities, they act at a distance one upon another, but this action is so slight at great distances that their trajectories are rectilinear; nevertheless, from time to time, two of them may come near enough together to be deviated from their course, like a comet that passed too close to Jupiter. In a word, in the eyes of a giant, to whom our Suns were what our atoms are to us, the Milky Way would only look like a bubble of gas."
"Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system is called as 'Guru Graham' in Sanskrit. This planet is related to the intellect of humans. Hence it is called as Guru (Budha Graha). The planet Jupiter, changes from one Raashi (12 astrological signs. Aries, Taurus, etc) to another every year. During the period of retrograde it slows down but still it makes up for the slowness and on an average it changes the Raashi house every year. This change generally happens in the last week of the month December. This type of calendar system is connected with the movement of the Sun and is called as Solar Calendar."
"Now that she's back in the atmosphere, with drops of Jupiter in her hair, She checks out Mozart while she does Tae-Bo reminds me that there's a room to grow, hey, yeah."
"The sum of yesterdayes conferences were an examination of the Principles of Ptolemy and Copernicus, and which of their opinions is the more probable and rational; that, which affirmeth the sub¬stance of the Cœlestial bodies to be ingenerable, incorruptible, un-alterable, impassible, and in a word, exempt from all kind of change, save that of local, and therefore to be a fifth essence, quite different from this of our Elementary bodies, which are generable, corruptible, alterable, or else the other, which taking away such deformity from the parts of the World, holdeth the Earth to en¬joy the same perfections as the other integral bodies of the universe; and esteemeth it a moveable and erratick Globe, no lesse than the Moon, Jupiter, Venus, or any other Planet."
"I [Trelawny] am likely to develop a cough, owing to the unlucky conjunction of Mars and Jupiter."
"They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition, Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge, They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again, The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure, The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine, Their dearest child mournest though only for Jupiter? Considerest though alone the burial of the stars."
"The Pythagorean harmony of the spheres lives on to this day. In his Natural History (circa AD77), the Roman scientist and noble man Pliny the Elder considered formed by the earth and Moon to be a tone; Moon to Mercury a semi-tone; Mercury to Venus, a semi-tone; Venus to the Sun, a minor third; Sun to Mars, a tone, Mars to Jupiter, a semi-tone; Jupiter to Saturn, a semi-tone; and Saturn to the fixed stars, a minor third. The 'Pythagorean Scale' created from this musical arrangement is still recognised. And Pliny's report reveals not only a heavenly musical scale, but also a Cosmic architecture that was to have a profound influence on the history of astrobiology. The story goes that only the master, Pythagoras, was graced with the gift of actually hearing this harmony of the spheres."
"To the ancient eye, without the use of spyglass, only seven of these ‘wanderers’ or ‘planets’ as they were known, could be seen among the thousands of lights that bejewelled the firmament. The 'Wanderers' were different. True, like the fixed stars, the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn all seemed to revolve once a day around the Earth. But the Plants also had a peculiar motion."
"...cosmos was complete. Its out limit was the stellar sphere. Just inside was Saturn, since it was the planet that took longest to move around the Zodiac. Next came Jupiter and Mars, set in order of decreasing orbital period, the time taken to make one complete orbit about the central Earth. Innermost was the Moon, since the lunar orbit placed it closest to us. The remaining three planets of Sun, Venus and Mercury, posed a problem. All three vagabond stars made their seeming journey about the Earth, in the same common time of one year."
"The term ‘superior planet’ was used by those bodies (Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) that lay behind the Sun’s orbit. The system gave no idea of the sheer size of the orbits, and no account of inconsistencies of the planets in their apparent motion. But these mathematical features were to develop later."
"The great man [Galileo in 1610 on 24 and 25 April] was asked to demonstrate the Jupiter moons in the spyglass. Not one among the eminent guests was convinced of their existence. The crude nature of the mysterious gadget did not help. But many were blinded by bias — they refused to look down the tube...Kepler was the only weighty voice raised in defense...The revolution in science begins with the discovery of these ‘alien’ worlds and the names of Galileo and Kepler have come to symbolize that revolution."
"Back in 1610, perhaps the greatest discovery Galileo had made with the spyglass was the essentially four new worlds in the Jupiter system. The four new planets were the first four moons of Jupiter their significance to the case of Copernicanism was set up by Galileo. The moons in orbit around Jupiter also exposed the ancient fallacy that the earth was the center around which all revolved."
"He discovered the moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, the terrestrial nature of the [[Moon, and thousands upon thousands of stars never picked out before. Galileo's findings provided immense impetus to the Copernican viewpoint on the cosmos and also boosted Atomist speculation. May be this universe is, as the Atomists said, a cosmos vast in scale, perhaps even infinite, and abundantly seeded with life throughout."
"That the planets are not without Water, is not made probable by the late observations: For about Jupiter are observed some spots of a darker hue than the rest of his Body, which by their continual change show themselves to be Clouds...Mars too is found not to be without his dark spots... but whether he has clouds or no, we have not had the same opportunity of observing as in Jupiter. Since ‘its certain that Earth and Jupiter have their water and clouds, there is no reason why the other Planets should be without them. I can’t say that they are exactly of the same nature with our Water, but they should be liquid their use requires, as their beauty does that they should be clear. For this Water of ours, in Jupiter or Saturn, would be frozen up instantly for reason of the vast distance of the Sun. Every Planet therefore must have its Waters of such a temper as to be proportione’d to its heat."
"Attendants of Jupiter and Saturn are of the same nature with our Moon, as going round them, and being carry'd with them round the Sun just as the Moon is with the Earth. Their Likeness reaches to other things too,...Therefore whatsoever we can with reason affirm or fancy of our Moon must be supposed with very little alteration to belong to the Guards of Jupiter and Saturn, as having no reason to be at all inferior to that."
"If the Moon is not inhabited, as observations suggest based on the absence of water and an atmosphere, this says little about life on other worlds, save for those of similar rank, i.e., other moons. Which means that other planets, especially those superior and majestic worlds, such as Saturn and Jupiter, should be equal in all ways to the Earth, intelligent inhabitants included."
"Featured in his Celestial Scenery (1837), Dick discusses the cosmos, as seen from Mars, Jupiter, the planetoids, and beyond. Using a method similar to that of Huygens, Dick takes the topic further still, allotting populations to all the planetary bodies of the solar system, and even for the rings of Saturn, a rather arresting idea."
"Surely no astronomer worthy the name can regard this grand orb as the cinder-centred globe of watery matter so contemptuously dealt with by one who, be remembered thankfully was not an astronomer...Jupiter in a sense a Sun...a source of heat which serves its satellites on which life – even such forms of life as we are familiar with – may still exist...[the gas giant] must be intended one day the abode of noble races."
"Each planet, according to its dimension, has a certain length of planetary life, the youth and age of which include the following eras :- a Sun like state; a state like that of Jupiter or Saturn, but when much heat but little light is evolved; a condition like that of our earth; and lastly, the stage through which our Moon is passing, which may be regarded as planetary decrepitude."
"Proctor had banished Solar system life from any moon or planet other than Earth. On Mars it had disappeared, though, 'the development of higher forms of life may have been less complete than on our earth'. Jupiter lay in wait. Lifeless still, it was evolving an enabling habitat, one that would embrace 'creatures far higher in the scale of being than any that have inhabited, or may inhabit, the earth. For Proctor, in time even the Sun will harbour life."
"Rather under-represented in moons, petite in mass and magnitude, Earth does not fare well in comparison with gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, and especially the Sun. Rejecting the idea the giant planets are poorly placed, Flammarion even so admits atmospheres of other plants are ‘essentially different’, from those on Earth, as there is no evidence extant to show they are ‘of a chemical composition analogous to our planet."
"My Seal-Ring Mercury has cast aside The signs of intellectual pride, Freely offers thee the soul: Art thou noble to receive? Canst thou give or take the whole, Nobly promise and believe? Then thou wholly human art, A spotless, radiant, ruby heart, And the golden chain of love Has bound thee to the realm above"
"A similar situation occurred in astronomy, where the Newtonian law of gravitation had been found to predict the orbits of the outer planets with great accuracy, but had failed with the orbits of Mercury and Venus. The relativity theory of gravitation had provided the necessary modification of Newton's law, and in working out the details of the new theory, Einstein had utilized the fact that Newtonian law gave the right result at great distances from the sun. Heisenberg, confronted with a similar problem, was able to avail himself of the fact that the classical mechanics gave the right result at great distances from the atomic nucleus. Here, and here alone Heisenberg's theory made contact with the world of the older physics."
"But it is a very remarkable circumstance, that an acquaintance with the seven days of the week, so familiar from remote antiquity to the people who originally spoke Sanskrit language, though unknown to the Greeks and Romans, should have been preserved among the Germans. It is true, indeed, that among them the days received their names from their principal deities, and not merely from the planets, which, in Hindu mythology, are considered only as celestial beings of an inferior description. There seems, also, to be no doubt that Germans selected the names of the same planets to designate the days of the week, which have been immemorially used for the same purpose by the Hindus; and that, in both Germany and India, their consecutive order was the day of the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn."
"His thirty four circles or epicycles comprised four for the earth, three for the moon, seven for Mercury (on account of his highly eccentric orbit) and five each for the other planets."
"And while he was Euphorbus, he used to say that he [Pythagoras] had formerly been Aethalides, and that he had received as a gift from Mercury the perpetual transmigration of his soul, so that it was constantly transmigrating and passing into whatever plants or animals it pleased."
"Mercury is a small world of extreme temperatures, with a global magnetic field like Earth’s, but much weaker. Neither Venus nor Mars has such a magnetic field, although the two planets are similar to Earth in many other ways. Venus, unlike the earth has a hellish temperature. Venus is farther from the Sun than Mercury but is even hotter. The high temperature is due to an extreme greenhouse effect, the process by which the atmospheric gases raise the temperature by absorbing outward flowing heat. Earth’s atmosphere may once have contained large amounts of carbon dioxide, the way Venus’s atmosphere does now. But on earth, the oceans absorbed much of carbon dioxide, so that gas could not trap as much heat in the atmosphere as it does on Venus. The three large terrestrial planets are like the bowls of cereals in the child’s story of Goldilocks. Venus is too hot, Mars is too cold, but Earth is just right to support liquid water and life as we know it… Venus is earth’s “evil twin”. It’s about the same size as earth, but with deadly heat and pressure, an unbreathable atmosphere, and highly acid rain"
"Wide are the meadows of night And daisies are shining there, Tossing their lovely dews, Lustrous and fair; And through these sweet fields go, Wanderers amid the stars — Venus, Mercury, Uranus, Neptune, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars."
"The generalized theory of relativity has furnished still more remarkable results. This considers not only uniform but also accelerated motion. In particular, it is based on the impossibility of distinguishing acceleration from the gravitation or other force which produces it. Three consequences of the theory may be mentioned of which two have been confirmed while the third is still on trial: (1) It gives a correct explanation of the residual motion of forty-three seconds of arc per century of the perihelion of Mercury. (2) It predicts the deviation which a ray of light from a star should experience on passing near a large gravitating body, the sun, namely, 1".7. On Newton's corpuscular theory this should be only half as great. As a result of the measurements of the photographs of the eclipse of 1921 the number found was much nearer to the prediction of Einstein, and was inversely proportional to the distance from the center of the sun, in further confirmation of the theory. (3) The theory predicts a displacement of the solar spectral lines, and it seems that this [[prediction is also verified."
"Mercury is one of the least-understood of the planets in our Solar System. Its distance from the Sun is just over one-third that of the Earth, and it contains a mass just 5½ percent that of Earth....Mercury has a weak magnetic field, about one percent as strong as Earth's… Mercury is so small that most scientists expected its core to have cooled and solidified long ago. Those scientists speculated that the magnetic field seen today may have been "frozen" into the planet when the core cooled."
"The Spirits survey the heavens and the earth and all the harmonious motions of the universe. They see the heavenly bodies set in revolving whorls, which, whorl within whorl, combine to form the Spinning-whorl on the Spindle of Necessity; and the Goddess holds the spindle on her knee, and spins the thread which the Fates wind, unwind and cut. The heavenly bodies, or the spheres or whorls in which they lie, are arranged one within another in the following order: 1. The Fixed Stars. 2. Saturn. 3. Jupiter. 4. Mars. 5. Mercury. 6. Venus. 7. The Sun. 8. The Moon. This order is as good as any other that can be framed under a geocentric hypothesis."
"Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies, And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise."
"Why should Venus and Mercury have no satellites, and by what, when they exist, were they formed? The Astronomers 'do not know.' Because, we say, science has only one key — the key of matter — to open the mysteries of nature withal, while occult philosophy has seven keys and explains that which science fails to see. Mercury and Venus have no satellites, but they had 'parents' just as the Earth had. Both are far older than the Earth, and, before the latter reaches her seventh Round, her mother Moon will have dissolved into thin air, as the 'Moons' of the other planets have, or have not, as the case may be, since there are planets which have several moons — a mystery again which no Oedipus of astronomy has solved."
"Mercurial is relating to, or born under the planet Mercury. It is having qualities of eloquence, ingenuity, or thievishness attributed to the god Mercury or to the influence of the planet Mercury. It is characterized by rapid and unpredictable changeableness of mood [a mercurial temper] of, relating to, containing, or caused by Mercury."
"Intercrater plains dominate Mercury's highlands. This image of the Mercurian highlands shows large areas of intercrater plains. The large scarp near the planet's limb is a thrust fault."
"The Planet closest to the Sun is a beautiful sight, it shines brightly in the twilight sky. In our busy modern culture, most people know they can see Mercury with the naked eye only after a purposeful search, having found its location for the evening or morning from an astronomical source."
"Most ancient cultures were familiar with the twilight wanderers and guardian of the Sun. Because Mercury is closest planet to the Sun, its hurried orbit takes just 88 Earth days, and switches its appearance from east (morning twilight) to west (evening twilight) in the sky with a slightly variable period of about three months. Mercury also has an orbital plane that is tilted with respect to that of the Earth, so it also bobs up and down in the sky relative to the plane of the Earth and the Sun. Thus, it is sometimes lower than the Sun in declination and at other times it is higher. These two striking orbital peculiarities further contribute to Mercury's elusiveness....By far Mercury has been, most familiar to people living in equatorial and tropical latitudes, especially those with dry climates an clear skies."
"There is ample linguistic evidence that some of the first people to observe Mercury and commit the planet to the immortality of myth were Germanic people and Scandinavians who navigated far south from their native lands into what is now the Mediterranean and the coasts of Africa. Mercury was connected with the deity Woodan, or Odin among the northern seafarers. In Italy ancient people called Mercury Boudha, a word with the same origin as Woodan or Odin. The connection lives on in our current use of English day of week Wednesday derived from Woodan’s day."
"As seen from Earth, both Mercury and Venus stay close to the Sun because they orbit the Sun within the Earth's orbit. At their largest angular distance from the Sun as seen from Earth, they are at greatest elongation."
"The astronomical symbol of Mercury [☿] can be traced to a medieval Greek manuscript where it takes the form ?. The horizontal cross is a modern addition. The "horns" at the top of the symbol represent the wings of this speedy planet It is from the use of the name Hermes for Mercury that the usage of Hermean for characteristics of Mercury became popular during the 19th century and continues to be used by some today."
"In 1639 Giovanni Zupus discovered that Mercury went through phases like the Moon....These observations were profoundly significant because they were proof that the Copernican theory was correct and the earth was not at the center of the Universe."
"Observations of the bright side of the Moon and Mercury were made with the airglow spectrometer and obtained the first and only measurements of Mercury in the EUV (extreme ultraviolet radiation). In addition, Venus, and hydrogen and helium radiation emanating from outside the Solar System were observed with the spectrometer."
"The first pictures of Mercury were taken on 24 March 1974 from a distance of 5.5 million km...as Mariner 10 neared Mercury the images showed a heavily cratered surface superficially resembling the Moon’s."
"Mercury's magnetic field was thought to be internally generated and similar in form to the Earth's field."
"Mercury's orbit around the Sun is more elliptical than any other planet (Pluto is a Kuiper belt object). Its eccentricity, however, is still small enough that the orbit appears almost circular."
"Temperatures on Mercury vary enormously. The planet is only is about 46 million km from the Sun at perihelion. At the equator, near the noon, the surface temperature reaches 427 degrees C (800 degrees F). At night just before sunrise, however, the temperature plunges to a frigid – 183 degrees C."
"Mercury experiences the most extreme temperature range of any planet or satellite in the Solar System."
"Mercury is the smallest planet in the Solar System (4,878 km diameter). Even three outer satellites are equal or larger than Mercury – Callisto (4,818 km diameter), Ganymede (another satellite of Jupiter) at 5,468 km diameter is significantly larger and the Saturnian's Satellite Titan (5,150 km diameter) is also larger. Mercury is only 4,878 km in diameter, or about one-third the diameter of the earth. Its volume is only about 6% that of the Earth, so it would take almost 18 Mercurys to make one Earth."
"Although Mercury is small, it is very massive for its size (3.3x 1023 kg). Therefore, Mercury has almost the same surface gravity as the larger planet Mars."
"Scientists strongly suspect that iron is the principal heavy element responsible for Mercury's high density. From this high density we can infer that the planet is composed of about 70% by weight of metallic iron and only 30% by weight of rocky material. Mercury thus contains more than twice as much iron per unit volume as any other planet or satellite in the Solar System."
"Since Mercury rotates once every 58.6 Earth days and orbits the Sun in 87.9 Earth days, it rotates exactly three times as it circles the Sun twice."
"Mercury goes around the sun the fastest of all the planets. Mercury has no moons."
"The Romans believed that gods and goddesses were in charge of everything on Earth. Mercury is named after the messenger for their gods. The Roman Mercury had wings on his helmet and shoes. He could travel very quickly from place to place. The planet Mercury moves quickly around the sun. That is how it got its name."
"Mercury is a little bigger than Earth's moon. It is made of heavier materials, like iron. But if you could weigh Mercury and the moon, Mercury would weigh a lot more. Mercury is heavy, but it is small. It would take more than 18 Mercurys to be as big as Earth."
"A day on Mercury lasts a lot longer than a day on Earth. One day on Mercury lasts 59 Earth days."
"Earth has a blanket of air around it. Mercury does not. The blanket is what helps keep Earth from getting too hot or cold. Because it is so close to the sun, Mercury can be very hot. At night, Mercury gets very cold. We could not live on Mercury!"
"Mercury is hard to study because it is so close to the sun. People have never gone to Mercury. Spacecraft without people have gone. Mariner 10 was the first to visit Mercury. It flew by in 1974 and 1975. Not even half of Mercury was seen then. After that, nothing was sent to Mercury for more than 30 years. NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft flew by Mercury in 2008 and 2009. In March 2011, it began to orbit Mercury. MESSENGER will study parts of Mercury that have not been seen before. It will let scientists learn many new things about the plane."
"The planet Mercury is dotted with holes that appear to be unlike any other landform yet seen in the solar system. High-resolution photographs from NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft revealed the shallow, rimless, irregularly shaped depressions—similar to the holes in Swiss cheese—in impact craters all over Mercury."
"The features are widespread both in latitude and longitude. Dubbed hollows, the odd landforms can be tens of meters to a few kilometers wide, whereas the impact craters that contain them are tens of kilometers wide or bigger. The hollows are often seen in clusters on the walls, floors, and peaks of the craters. Many hollows have smooth, flat bottoms and feature highly reflective material...While Mercury had previously been thought of as a geologically dead planet, with few changes to it the hollows are much smaller than known volcanic pits, and the holes appear in places on Mercury that aren't likely to have experienced volcanic activity."
"The Martian depressions form as carbon-dioxide ice sublimates—turns directly from a solid to a gas—during seasonal temperature changes, hinting that some type of sublimation may be happening on Mercury. But on Mercury it's happening in solid rock, not in ice, so it's sort of a unique expression of geological processes that happen elsewhere, but maybe not as vigorously."
"...that the hollows could form when volatile materials such as sulfur on the surface are exposed to the harsh solar wind—actually a stream of charged particles from the sun. Since the tiny planet has no atmosphere, these particles can hit the surface directly, vaporizing volatile minerals. Or the close sun's intense heat could "boil" the minerals away."
"...using MESSENGER's x-ray spectrometer [it is] found that Mercury's surface has much more sulfur than that of any other rocky planet in the solar system."
"The old thinking was, Oh, Mercury, it's an old burned-out cinder and not so interesting. Now, here's this jaw-dropping thing that nobody ever predicted."
"Adorned with thousands of beautiful ringlets, Saturn is unique among the planets. All four gas giant planets have rings -- made of chunks of ice and rock -- but none are as spectacular or as complicated as Saturn's. Like the other gas giants, Saturn is mostly a massive ball of hydrogen and helium. Ten important facts related to Saturn are: If the sun were as tall as a typical front door, the Earth would be the size of a nickel and Saturn would be about as big as a basketball; Saturn orbits our sun, a star. Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun at a distance of about 1.4 billion km (886 million miles) or 9.5 AU; One day on Saturn takes 10.7 hours (the time it takes for Saturn to rotate or spin once); Saturn makes a complete orbit around the sun (a year in Saturnian time) in 29 Earth years; Saturn is a gas-giant planet and does not have a solid surface; Saturn's atmosphere is made up mostly of hydrogen (H2) and helium (He); Saturn has 53 known moons with an additional 9 moons awaiting confirmation of their discovery; Saturn has the most spectacular ring system of all our solar system's planets. It is made up of seven rings with several gaps and divisions between them; Five missions have been sent to Saturn; Since 2004, Cassini|Cassini has been exploring Saturn, its moons and rings; Saturn cannot support life as we know it. However, some of Saturn's moons have conditions that might support life; When Galileo Galilei looked at Saturn through a telescope in the 1600s, he noticed strange objects on each side of the planet and drew in his notes a triple-bodied planet system and then later a planet with arms or handles. The handles turned out to be the rings of Saturn."
"Discovered by the ancients, Saturn has an orbit size around the sun of 1,426,666,422 km (886,489,415 miles); is 9.537 times the size of the earth; its perihelion (closest) is : 1,349,823,615 km (838,741,509 miles) is 9.176x Earth; Aphelion (farthest) is 1,503,509,229 km (934,237,322 miles), 9.885 x Earth; Sidereal Orbit Period (Length of Year) is 29.447498 Earth years (10,755.70 Earth days), 29.447 x Earth; Orbit Circumference is 8,957,504,604 km (5,565,935,315 miles), 9.530 x Earth; its Average Orbit Velocity is 34,701 km/h (21,562 mph, is 0.324 times of earth’s orbit velocity; orbit eccentricity is 0.05386179 which is 3.223 x Earth; its Orbit Inclination is 2.49 degrees; Equatorial Inclination to Orbit is 26.7 degrees; it has a mean radius of 58,232 km (36,183.7 miles), 9.1402 x Earth; has an Equatorial Circumference of 365,882.4 km (227,348.8 miles), 9.1402 x Earth; its volume is 8.2713 x 1014 km3, 763.594 x Earth; it has a Mass of, 95.161 x Earth; its Density is 0.687 g/cm3, 0.125 x Earth; its surface area measures 4.2612 x 1010 km2 which is 83.543 x Earth; it has a Surface Gravity 10.4* m/s2 (34.3 ft/s2 )_( 100 pounds on Earth, you would weigh about 107 pounds on Saturn); has an Escape Velocity Of 129,924 km/h (80,731 mph), Escape velocity of Earth is 25,030 mph; Sidereal Rotation Period (Length of Day) is 0.444 Earth days (10.656 hours}, 0.445 x Earth; its Effective Temperature is 178 °C (288 °F) and scientific notation is 95 K; its Atmospheric Constituents are Hydrogen (H2), Helium (He) while Earth's atmosphere consists mostly of N2 and O2."
"Each planet takes a certain amount of time to travel thru all 12 signs and return to its original position in any given chart. The Moon takes only a month. The Sun takes a year. … Mercury and Venus stay close to the Sun, so their cycles through all signs are close to the Sun’s. Mars takes longer about two years...Jupiter takes about 12 months to complete a full cycle thru all 12 signs. Saturn takes 28-30 years to complete a full cycle. Because Saturn is a symbol of the wisdom which grows with age, its cycle is particularly important in reflecting our development. Every seven years, Saturn completes a a quarter of the cycle, and we move into a new stage of awareness."
"The astrologers and historians write that the ascendant as of Oxford is Capricornus, whose lord is Saturn, a religious planet, and patron of religious men."
"I came into the world under the sign of Saturn -- the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays."
"We must believe then, that as from hence we see Saturn and Jupiter; if we were in either of the two, we should discover a great many Worlds which we perceive not; and that the de Bergerac]] in: Cyrano de Bergerac, Archibald Lovell, Curtis Hidden Page A Voyage to the Moon, Doubleday and McClure Company, 1899, p. 32"
"Burden not the back of Aries, Leo, or Taurus, with thy faults, nor make Saturn, Mars, or Venus, guilty of thy Follies. Think not to fasten thy imperfections on the Stars, and so despairingly conceive thy self under a fatality of being evil."
"You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn."
"In the night sky Saturn is easily visible to the unaided eye as a non-twinkling point of light. When viewed through even a small telescope, the planet, encircled by its magnificent rings, is arguably the most sublime object in the solar system. Saturn is designated by the symbol ♄ .... Saturn’s name comes from the Roman god of agriculture, who is equated with the Greek deity Kronos, one of the Titan and the father of Zeus (the Roman god Jupiter). As the farthest of the planets known to ancient observers, Saturn also was noted to be the slowest-moving ...Italy:Italian astronomer Galileo in 1610 was the first to observe Saturn with a telescope. Although he saw a strangeness in Saturn’s appearance, the low resolution of his instrument did not allow him to discern the true nature of the planet’s rings....Saturn’s structure and evolutionary history, however, differ significantly from those of its larger counterpart. Like the other giant, or Jovian planets—Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune Saturn has extensive systems of moons (natural satellites) and rings, which may provide clues to its origin and evolution as well as to those of the Solar System|solar system. Saturn’s moon Titan is distinguished from all other moons in the Solar System by the presence of a significant atmosphere, one that is denser than that of any of the terrestrial planets except Venus."
"The greatest advances in knowledge of Saturn, as well as of most of the other planets, have come from deep-space probes. Four spacecraft have visited the Saturnian system: Pioneer 11 in 1979, [[w:Four spacecraft have visited the Saturnian system: Pioneer 11 in 1979, [[w:Voyagers 1|Voyagers 1] and 2 in the two years following, and, after almost a quarter-century, , which arrived in 2004. The first three missions were short-term flybys, but Cassini -Huuygens|Cassini-Huygens]] went into orbit around Saturn for years of investigations, while its Huygens probe parachuted through the atmosphere of Titan and reached its surface, becoming the first spacecraft to land on a moon other than Earth’s.."
"Saturn Return would be caused by the planet Saturn returning to its original birth position in the sky, thus energetically influencing the individual’s multi energy dimensional system."
"There's something strange going on below the surface of Saturn's )|Death Star-looking moon Mimas. Mimas' rotation and its orbit around Saturn make the moon look like it's rocking and back forth and oscillating similar to the way a pendulum swings. The rocking motion is called Llibration, and it's commonly observed in moons that are influenced by the gravity from neighboring planets. However, using images of the moon captured by the Cassini spacecraft, Radwan Tajeddine, a research associate at Cornell University, discovered that the satellite's libration was much more exaggerated in one spot than predicted."
"The Solar System consists of eight "planets" Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. A new distinct class of objects called "dwarf planets" exist. "Planets" and "dwarf planets" are two distinct classes of objects. The first members of the "dwarf planet" category are Ceres, Pluto and 2003 UB313 (temporary name)."
"Saturn seems to have impre\ssed the seal of melancholy on me from the beginning."
"I was, I remember, I still remember when the first time I pointed the telescope at the sky and I saw Saturn with the rings. It was a beautiful image. And that really made my mind to become a scientist. And that was the first step in order to become an astronaut, of course."
"There is not perhaps another object in the heavens that presents us with such a variety of extraordinary phenomena as the planet Saturn: a magnificent globe, encompassed by a stupendous double ring: attended by seven satellites: ornamented with equatorial belts: compressed at the poles: turning upon its axis: mutually eclipsing its ring and satellites, and eclipsed by them: the most distant of the rings also turning upon its axis, and the same taking place with the farthest of the satellites: all the parts of the system of Saturn occasionally reflecting light to each other: the rings and moons illuminating the nights of the Saturnian: the globe and satellites enlightening the dark parts of the rings: and the planet and rings throwing back the sun's beams upon the moons, when they are deprived of them at the time of their conjunctions."
"August 28, 1780, having brought the telescope to the parallel of Saturn, I discovered a sixth satellite of that planet; and 'l also saw the spots upon Saturn better than I had ever seen them before; so that I may date the finishing of the forty~feet telescope from that time."
"I can't say they are exactly of the same nature with our Water; but that they should be liquid their use requires, as their beauty does that they be clear. For this Water of ours, in Jupiter or Saturn, would be frozen up instantly by reason of the vast distance of the Sun."
"When the movement of the comets is considered and we reflect on the laws of gravity, it will be readily perceived that their approach to Earth might there cause the most woeful events, bring back the deluge, or make it perish in a deluge of fire, shatter it into small dust, or at least turn it from its orbit, drive away its Moon, or, still worse, the Earth itself outside the orbit of Saturn, and inflict upon us a winter several centuries long, which neither men nor animals would be able to bear. The tails even of comets would not be unimportant phenomena, if in taking their departure left them in whole or part in our atmosphere."
"Six giant storms, called s, have erupted on Saturn since 1876 at intervals of about 30 years. The most recent one occurred on Dec. 5th, 2010 at planetographic latitude 37.7ºN. It produced intense lightning, created enormous cloud disturbances and wrapped around the planet in 6 months."
"I have been battering away at Saturn, returning to the charge every now and then. I have effected several breaches in the solid ring, and now I am splash into the fluid one, amid a clash of symbols truly astounding. When I reappear it will be in the dusky ring, which is something like the state of the air supposing the siege of Sebastopol conducted from a forest of guns 100 miles one way, and 30,000 miles the other, and the shot never to stop, but go spinning away round a circle, radius 170,000 miles."
"Below Saturn is the well known group, the Sickle, part of the constellation of Leo. The elevation of the plane of Saturn's rings above the earth is increasing slightly at present, being now 15°, so that the rings are coming into better position for observation. The outer major axis of the rings is a little over 45 inches."
"It’s amazing to me that not only can we put a probe around Saturn and get images of its moons, but our math and physics are so freaking accurate we can say, "Hey, you know what? On this date at this time if we turn Cassini that way we’ll see a moon over 2 million kilometers away pass in front of another one nearly 3 million kilometers away."
"The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage."
"The White Spot on Saturn's Ring, recently announced by Terby of Belgium, was observed at this Observatory [Warner Observatory, Rochester] on the evening of March 14th [1889] both by Professor Brooks and myself. In consequence, however, of its faintness, and of the bright moonlight in which it was viewed, it was a difficult object; but as we both saw in the same position and of the same size and shape, there could be no doubt in the mind of either of us that we had seen the “spot” which appeared as a narrow band extending across both outer rings, its western boundary being in contact with the black notch termed as shadow of the ball on the ring."
"It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy's edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create one world. Instead of one world, we have star wars, and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet's dead."
"Saturn Packing my bags -- going away To a place where the air is clean On Saturn There's no sense to sit and watch people die We don't fight our wars the way you do We put back all the things we use On Saturn There's no sense to keep on doing such crimes I'm.... Going back to Saturn where the rings all glow Rainbow, moonbeams and orange snow On Saturn People live to be two hundred and five Going back to Saturn where the people smile Don't need cars cause we've learned to fly On Saturn Just to live to us is our natural high."
"I'll be better on Saturn; none of this matters."
"giant planet whose equator is nearly at right angles to its orbit. A collision with an Earth-sized object may explain the unique tilt. Nearly a twin in size to Neptune, Uranus has more methane in its mainly hydrogen and helium atmosphere than Jupiter or Saturn. Methane gives Uranus its blue tint."
"About Uranus: If the Sun were as tall as a typical front door, Earth would be the size of a nickel and Uranus would be about as big as a baseball; Uranus orbits our Sun, a star. Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun at a distance of about 2.9 billion km (1.8 billion miles) or 19.19 AU.; One day on Uranus takes about 17 hours (the time it takes for Uranus to rotate or spin once). Uranus makes a complete orbit around the Sun (a year in Uranian time) in about 84 Earth years; Uranus is an ice giant; Most (80 percent or more) of the planet's mass is made up of a hot dense fluid of "icy" materials – water (H2O), methane (CH4). and ammonia (NH3) – above a small rocky core; Uranus has an atmosphere which is mostly made up of hydrogen (H2) and helium (He), with a small amount of methane (CH4); Uranus has 27 moons; Uranus' moons are named after characters from the works of William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope; Uranus has faint rings; The inner rings are narrow and dark and the outer rings are brightly colored; Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited Uranus; Uranus cannot support life as we know; Like Venus, Uranus has a retrograde rotation (east to west). Unlike any of the other planets, Uranus rotates on its side, which means it spins horizontally."
"Formed a design at the beginning of this week of investigating, as soon as possible after taking my degree, the irregularities in the motion of Uranus which are yet unaccounted for; in order to find whether they may be attributed to the action of an undiscovered planet beyond it ; and if possible, thence to determine the elements of its orbit, etc., approximately which would probably lead to its discovery [Neptune]."
"The moons of Uranus seem to have got a twist."
"Uranus, one of the giant planets, is the seventh planet from the Sun, sometimes visible to the naked eye. It has 27 satellites, ring system, and an axis of rotation almost lying in the plane of the orbit. Mean distance from Sun: 2870 million km; period of revolution around sun: 84 years; period of axial rotation: 17.23 hours; diameter and mass: 4 and 14.5times that of earth respectively."
"Uranus is also, Ouranos in Classical Mythology, the personification of Heaven and ruler of the world, son and husband of Gaea (Earth) and father of the Titans, who was castrated and dethroned by his youngest son, Cronus,at the instigation of Gaea."
"... named for the Greek god of the sky. Uranus was the first planet discovered in modern times (1781)."
"First planet discovered that was not known in ancient times, named for the god of Heaven, husband of Gaia, the Earth, from Latin Uranus, from Greek Ouranos literally "heaven," in Greek cosmology, the god who personifies the heavens, father of the Titans. Cf. Urania, name of the Muse of astronomy, from Greek Ourania, fem. of Ouranios, literally "heavenly.""
"The planet [Uranus] was discovered and identified as such in 1781 by Sir William Herschel (it had been observed before, but mistaken for a star, e.g. in 1690 when John Flamsteed cataloged it as 34 Tauri); Herschel proposed calling it Georgium Sidus, literally "George's Star," in honour of his patron, King George III of England."
"In our solar system, planetary rings are found around all the giant planets, showing spectacular variety. Jupiter's thin ring system is composed mostly of dust... Uranus has ten narrow, sometimes eccentric rings and a family of dust bands... All the ring systems have moons interspersed, which sculpt, collect, and release ring material. Moons are the likely parents of the present rings, ground down by meteorites and destroyed randomly to produce the relatively short-lived ring systems. Thus, we observe the natural stochastic results of birth and death processes when we examine the rings closely. Ring systems are relatively nearby and provide a natural laboratory for phenomena in flattened disks, including the nebula around our Sun that gave rise to the planets."
"The planet was known in English in 1780s as the Georgian Planet ; French astronomers began calling Herschel, and ultimately German astronomer Johann Bode proposed Uranus as in conformity with other planet names. However, the name didn't come into common usage until c.185"
"Although Uranus and Neptune are superficially twin planets, they are different enough to remind us - as do Venus and Earth - that we still have a lot to learn about the mix of natural laws and historical accidents that formed the planets and fashioned their destinies."
"I cannot but wish to take this opportunity of expressing my sense of gratitude, by giving the name of Georgium Sidus... to a star which (with respect to us) first began to shine under His auspicious reign."
"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken."
"...Pechblende does not belong either to the ores of zinc, or to those of iron, nor yet to the genus of tungsten or wolfram, and in general to none of the metallic substances hitherto known; but, on the contrary, that it consists of a peculiar, distinct, metallic substance. Therefore its former denominations, Pechblende, pitch-iron-ore, &c. are no longer applicable, and must be supplied by another more appropriate name. --- I have chosen that of Uranium, as a kind of memorial, that the chemical discovery of this new metal happened in the period of astronomical discovery of the new planet Uranus."
"Uranus after Voyager 2's encounter with Uranus was a complete success. Astronomers now have the task of interpreting all the data they gathered. ONLY a few months ago, it was possible to put the sum total of our knowledge of the distant planet Uranus into a single article. But in just a few hours, the hardy space probe Voyager 2 changed all that...Before the encounter on 24 January, astronomers knew that Uranus was four times the size of the earth, tipped up so that it ‘rotates on its side” as it orbits the sun every 84 years. It had five moons, each a few hundred kilometers across and a set of nine very narrow rings."
"Synchronicity does not admit causality in the analogy between terrestrial events and astrological constellations... What astrology can establish are the analogous events, but not that either series is the cause or the effect of the other. (For instance, the same constellation may at one time signify a catastrophe and at another time, in the same case, a cold in the head.) … In any case, astrology occupies a unique and special position among the intuitive methods... I have observed many cases where a well-defined psychological phase, or an analogous event, was accompanied by a transit (particularly when Saturn and Uranus were affected)."
"Scientific development depends in part on a process of non-incremental or revolutionary change. Some revolutions are large, like those associated with the names of Copernicus, Newton, or Darwin, but most are much smaller, like the discovery of oxygen or the planet Uranus. The usual prelude to changes of this sort is, I believed, the awareness of anomaly, of an occurrence or set of occurrences that does not fit existing ways of ordering phenomena. The changes that result therefore require 'putting on a different kind of thinking-cap', one that renders the anomalous lawlike but that, in the process, also transforms the order exhibited by some other phenomena, previously unproblematic."
"Wide are the meadows of night And daisies are shining there, Tossing their lovely dews, Lustrous and fair; And through these sweet fields go, Wanderers amid the stars— Venus, Mercury, Uranus, Neptune, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars."
"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote. Nevertheless, it has been found that there are apparent exceptions to most of these laws, and this is particularly true when the observations are pushed to a limit, i.e., whenever the circumstances of experiment are such that extreme cases can be examined. Such examination almost surely leads, not to the overthrow of the law, but to the discovery of other facts and laws whose action produces the apparent exceptions. As instances of such discoveries, which are in most cases due to the increasing order of accuracy made possible by improvements in measuring instruments, may be mentioned: first, the departure of actual gases from the simple laws of the so-called perfect gas, one of the practical results being the liquefaction of air and all known gases; second, the discovery of the velocity of light by astronomical means, depending on the accuracy of telescopes and of astronomical clocks; third, the determination of distances of stars and the orbits of double stars, which depend on measurements of the order of accuracy of one-tenth of a second-an angle which may be represented as that which a pin's head subtends at a distance of a mile. But perhaps the most striking of such instances are the discovery of a new planet or observations of the small irregularities noticed by Leverrier in the motions of the planet Uranus, and the more recent brilliant discovery by Lord Rayleigh of a new element in the atmosphere through the minute but unexplained anomalies found in weighing a given volume of nitrogen. Many other instances might be cited, but these will suffice to justify the statement that “our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.”"
"A slight sound at evening lifts me up by the ears, and makes life seem inexpressibly serene and grand. It may be in Uranus, or it may be in the shutter."
"During this time period, the discovery of the planet Uranus in 1781 caused a tremendous upset in the astrological community: this new planet forced the reevaluation of the entire system of Western astrology. Although Neptune’s and Pluto’s subsequent discoveries certainly caused stirs, Uranus was the planet that shook things up."
"The most common distinction made between the planets is “inner planets” versus outer “planets”. The term inner planets usually refers to the seven visual planets (although sometimes Jupiter and Saturn are not included in this list). This type of classification is very much a modern construct: before 1781, when Herschel discovered Uranus, there were only "inner" or "visible" planets—planets that were visible to the naked eye. (Of course the skies were a great deal clearer then). These included the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The outer planets are the planets that are only visible with a telescope: Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. The asteroid Chiron functions as a bridge between the inner and the outer planets....The fastest of the outer planets is Uranus which takes about 84 years to complete a cycle of the Zodiac. Today it is not unusual to see people to live past their Uranus return and humans are gradually developing a greater understanding of the energy of Uranus."
"Although modern astrologers consider the planet Uranus to be the ruler of Aquarius, and support this because of Aquarius' tendency to be revolutionary and unconventional, Aquarius is traditionally ruled by the planet Saturn."
"True to its nature, when Uranus was discovered in 1781, the very neat and symmetrical system of essential dignities was challenged and upset for the first time in history."
"The outer planets, which include Chiron, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, don't operate on an individual level the way the inner planets do, and they don't fit into the system of essential dignities. Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto spend so much time in each sign that they define the characteristics of entire generations, not of individuals."
"Neptune is dark, cold and whipped by supersonic winds. Neptune is the last of the hydrogen and helium gas giants in our solar system. More than 30 times as far from the Sun as Earth, the planet takes almost 165 Earth years to orbit our Sun. In 2011 Neptune completed its first orbit since its discovery in 1846."
"Things to know about Neptune are: If the Sun were as tall as a typical front door, the Earth would be the size of a nickel and Neptune would be about as big as a baseball. Neptune orbits our Sun, a star. Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun at a distance of about 4.5 billion km (2.8 billion miles) or 30.07 AU. One day on Neptune takes about 16 hours (the time it takes for Neptune to rotate or spin once). Neptune makes a complete orbit around the Sun (a year in Neptunian time) in about 165 Earth years (60,190 Earth days). Neptune is a sister ice giant to Uranus. Neptune is mostly made of a very thick, very hot combination of water, ammonia, and methane over a possible heavier, approximately Earth-sized, solid core. Neptune's atmosphere is made up mostly of hydrogen, helium (He) and methane. Neptune has 13 confirmed moons (and 1 more awaiting official confirmation of discovery). Neptune's moons are named after various sea gods and nymphs in Greek mythology. Neptune has six rings. Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited Neptune. Neptune cannot support life as we know it. At times during the course of Neptune's orbit, dwarf planet Pluto is actually closer to the Sun, and us, than Neptune. This is due to the unusual elliptical (egg) shape of Pluto's orbit."
"Neptune was discovered by Urbain Le Verrier, John Couch Adams, and Johann Galle on 23 September 1846. It orbits around Sun 4.4983964 x 109 km away and is of 30.070 x Earth. Its Perihelion (closest) is 4.45975 x 109 km (2.981 x 101 A.U.), which is 30.318 x Earth. Its Aphelion (farthest) is 4.53704 x 109 km (3.033 x 101 A.U.), which is 29.830 x Earth. Neptune’s Sidereal Orbit Period (Length of Year) is 164.79132 Earth years, which is by comparison 164.791 x Earth. Its Orbit Circumference is 2.826 x 1010 km and by comparison 30.071 x Earth. It has an Average Orbit Velocity of 19,566 km/h (12,158 mph) which is 0.182 x Earth. Its Orbit Eccentricity is 0.00859048, which is 0.514 x Earth. It has an Orbit Inclination of 1.77 degrees. Its Equatorial Inclination to Orbit is 28.3 degrees. It has a Mean Radius of 2.4622 x 104 km, which is 3.8647 x Earth. Its Equatorial Circumference is 1.54705 x 105 km, which is 3.8647 x Earth. Its volume is 6.25257 x 1013 km3 and by comparison is 57.723 x Earth. Its mass is 1.0241 x 1026 kg, which is 17.148 x Earth. Its density is 1.638 g/cm3 , which is 0.297 x Earth. Its surface area is 7.6183 x 109 km2 and by comparison 14.980 x Earth. Its Surface Gravity is 11.15 m/s2 (36.6 ft/s2.) and by comparison if you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, you would weigh 114 pounds on Neptune. Its Escape Velocity is 2.356 x 104 m/s, which is by comparison: 2.105 x Earth. Its Sidereal Rotation Period (Length of Day) is 0.671 Earth days. The Effective Temperature on the planet is -214 °C (-353 °F) with the scientific notation of 59 K. The atmospheric constituents of Neptune are Hydrogen, Helium and Methane."
"The Solar System consists of eight "planets" Mercury, Venus, Earth,Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. A new distinct class of objects called "dwarf planets" exist. "Planets" and "dwarf planets" are two distinct classes of objects. The first members of the "dwarf planet" category are Ceres, Pluto and 2003 UB313 (temporary name)."
"Sir,—The Planet [Neptune] whose position you marked out actually exists. On the day on which your letter reached me, I found a star of the eighth magnitude, which was not recorded in the excellent map designed by Dr. Bremiker, containing the twenty-first hour of the collection published by the Royal Academy of Berlin. The observation of the succeeding day showed it to be the Planet of which we were in quest."
"It is notorious that the same discovery is frequently made simultaneously and quite independently, by different persons. Thus, to speak of only a few cases in late years, the discoveries of photography, of electric telegraphy, and of the planet Neptune through theoretical calculations, have all their rival claimants. It would seem, that discoveries are usually made when the time is ripe for them—that is to say, when the ideas from which they naturally flow are fermenting in the minds of many men."
"We see it [the as-yet unseen, probable new planet, Neptune] as Columbus saw America from the coast of Spain. Its movements have been felt, trembling along the far-reaching line of our analysis with a certainty hardly inferior to that of ocular demonstration."
"The remote Neptune is almost certainly as much the twin of Uranus in its general features as Saturn is of Jupiter."
"The fact [is] that astronomers were able to predict the existence and location of Neptune, based on irregularities in the orbit of Uranus... Analysis of the orbital data of Uranus led to the conclusion that although the gravitational pull from Neptune accounted for 98% of the variation from the Uranus’s expected orbit, there were still unexplained irregularities."
"Neptune's atmosphere is revealed by Voyager 2 images to contain clouds of methane ice above a lower deck of hydrogen sulfide or ammonia ices, and to be dominated by an anticyclonic storm system designated the 'Great Dark Spot'; this bears both similarities and differences to the Great Red Spot of Jupiter. Like the rings of Uranus, those of Neptune are composed of very dark, but in addition very dusty, material. Six new regular satellites have been discovered whose radii range from 25 to 200 km. Triton is noted to be a differentiated body showing evidence of early surface-melting episodes. At least two active plumes are found on Triton, which may be driven by solar heating."
"This success permits us to hope that after thirty or forty years of observation on the new Planet [Neptune], we may employ it, in its turn, for the discovery of the one following it in its order of distances from the Sun. Thus, at least, we should unhappily soon fall among bodies invisible by reason of their immense distance, but whose orbits might yet be traced in a succession of ages, with the greatest exactness, by the theory of inequalities."
"A species having a proboscis two or three inches longer could reach the nectar in the largest flowers of Angræcum sesquipedale, whose nectaries vary in length from ten to fourteen inches. That such a moth exists in Madagascar may be safely predicted; and naturalists who visit that island should search for it with as much confidence as astronomers searched for the planet Neptune - and they will be equally successful!"
"Mercury is a small world of extreme temperatures, with a global magnetic field like Earth’s, but much weaker. Neither Venus nor Mars has such a magnetic field, although the two planets are similar to Earth in many other ways. Venus, unlike the Earth, has a hellish temperature. Venus is farther from the Sun than Mercury but is even hotter. The high temperature is due to an extreme greenhouse effect, the process by which the atmospheric gases raise the temperature by absorbing outward flowing heat. Earth’s atmosphere may once have contained large amounts of carbon dioxide, the way Venus’s atmosphere does now. But on earth, the oceans absorbed much of carbon dioxide, so that gas could not trap as much heat in the atmosphere as it does on Venus. The three large terrestrial planets are like the bowls of cereals in the child’s story of Goldilocks. Venus is too hot, Mars is too cold, but Earth is just right to support liquid water and life as we know it."