Marvels of the Universe 



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SATURN- THE RINGED PLANET 



BY T. E. R. PHILLIPS, F.R.A.S. 



Ix the earh' morning of September 17th last two bright planets were very close together in the 

 skv — so close that they could be seen in the same field of the telescope. They were Mars and Saturn 

 — the s\\iftly-moving, blood-red star of war, and the leisurely planet to which the old astrologers 

 assigned the character of lead. And of all the planets these are the two which appeal most strongly 

 to men's minds to-day : Mars, because it is the planet of romance — it is a near neighbour ; we 

 know a good deal about it. and it may be inhabited by beings something like ourselves. Saturn. 

 because of the unique beauty of its system, and the old enigma of its rings. Prior to the discovery 

 of Uranus, by Sir William Herschel. in 1781, Saturn was the most distant planet known. It revolves 

 round the sun at a mean distance of more than nine and a half times that of our own globe, and at 

 its very nearest approach to us it is still seven hundred and forty-four millions of miles away. The 

 globe of Saturn, like that of Jupiter, is soft and plastic and very hot, and the dense clouds enveloping 

 it are disposed in a number of more or less parallel streaks. Occasionally definite spots or other 

 irregularities are seen, and from the study of these we learn that the great globe — seven hundred 

 and sixty times as large as the Earth — is spinning round in between ten and eleven hours. But 

 of course, it is in the rings by which the planet is girdled that our interest is chiefly centred, and 

 the story of their discovery and explanation furnishes a remarkable chapter in the history of 

 astronomy. It was Galileo Galilei who. in the year 1610. first applied a telescope to the study of 

 the heavens. It was onlv a very small and imperfect instrument as compared with the giant 



[By 1. E. R. I'hillips, F.R.A.S. 

 THE PLANET SATURN. 



The glory and mystery of Saturn lie in its wonderful series of rings that greatly puzzled Galileo and other astronomers. 

 Ihe composition of these rings baffles even modern telescopes to determine: but they are believed to consist of loose particles 

 of matter 



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