Donald. Sawyer, Age 11, Of Cleveland, 0., for his question:
How did the planets get their names?
The planet pluto was not discovered until the year 1930, and in order to name it, the scientists dug way back into ancient history. Five of the planets had been named thousands of years ago when mankind still paid tribute to gods and goddesses. It seemed fitting that little Pluto also should be given a name from those ancient times.
Mankind is a stargazer by nature, and the heaven$ were studied and charted thousands of years ago. The early astronomers noticed that most of the bright pinpoints of light move in an orderly parade of fixed patterns over the sky. A few, hawever, wander this way and that against the background of fixed stars.
The ancient stargazers named them the planets, which means the wanderers. They also called the sun and the moon planets. Nowadays, we class the sun as a star and the moon as a satellite. The ancient astronomers had no telescopes, and so they knew only the planets they could see with their eyes.
Usually, only five planets are visible without the aid of a telescope. These five were named thousands of years ago in honor of four gods and a goddess. We no longer pay tribute to gods and goddesses. But when the telescope revealed three more planet members of the solar system, it seemed fitting to find similar names for them. After all, the planets themse1ves are all children of the same parent, the sun.
The five visible planets were named in the remote past for characters in roman mythology. Mercury was the wing footed god who carried messages between the gods and goddesses. Venus was the goddess of beauty ark. The guardian of gardens. Mars was the god of war and Jupiter the king of the gods. Saturn was a god of agriculture who was supposed to have been deposed by Jupiter.
The three invisible planets were discovered thousands of years later. But it seemed right and proper to name them also from characters in ancient mythology. Uranus was the Greek god of the sky. Neptune was the roman god of the sea, and Pluto the god of the shadowy underworld.
Given the planets have been/shorthand symbols. Mercury is represented by a wand with two serpents, and the symbol for Venus is like a looking glass. The sign for Mars is like a shield and sword, and the sign for Jupiter is like a thunderbolt. Slow moving Saturn is represented by the scythe of father time. The symbol for uranus is an arrow pointed up from the Earth, and Neptune is a three pronged trident. The shorthand symbol for little Pluto is a letter p with a tail.