2IO 



Marvels of the Universe 



telescopes of our daj^ but it revealed to him many things that the eye of man had never seen 

 before. The mountains in the Moon, the four chief satellites of Jupiter, thousands of stars 

 studding the region of the Milky Wa^^ — all these were quicklj^ found, and then Galileo turned 

 his attention to Saturn. How astonished he was and how puzzled by what he saw ! What could 

 those little globes be, almost in contact with the planet, one on either side of him ? Surely the 

 planet is triple, he thought ; and then to his amazement he watched them dwindle away, till, in 

 about two years' time, the\' disappeared entirely ! The men of those days had laughed at 

 Galileo's alleged discovery, and now even he himself began to wonder whether in some strange 

 way his eyes and glass had not played him false. But the day of his triumph was at hand, for 

 he soon saw the little bodies reappear in their old positions, and he watched them grow till 



TWO VIEWS OF SATURN. 



These are two of the phases of the planet that have puzzled observers. tn the first the rings appear to be changed into a 

 straight rod passed through the orb; in the second the rod-liUe character is lost, and only a dark bar across the orb is seen. 

 This is really the shadow cast by the ring, the latter being unseen in this phase. 



they were no longer like globes, but handles attached to the body of the planet through which 

 the dark sky could be seen. What a mystery Saturn was to the astronomers of those days is 

 shown by their curious drawings, and it was not till 1655 that Huygens found the solution of the 

 riddle. The planet, he said, " is girdled by a thin detached ring, inclined to the ecliptic," and 

 this statement afforded a complete explanation of those strange disappearances and reappearances 

 which had been so great a puzzle. As the planet revolves in its orbit and comes into different 

 positions relatively to the Earth the rings are seen in a variety of phases. Sometimes they are 

 presented edgewise to view and become invisible, owing to their remarkable thinness ; sometimes 

 they are open widely enough to look in small telescopes like loops or handles, as Galileo saw them 

 in 1616 ; and sometimes — when their inclination to the line of sight is greatest — they are seen to 

 project above and below the planet's globe. 



