Professor Pickering’s discovery of a ninth satellite of Saturn, situated at the great distance of nearly eight million miles from the planet, serves to call attention to the vastness of the “sphere of activity” over which the ringed planet reigns. Surprising as the distance of the new satellite appears when compared with that of our moon, it is yet far from the limit where Saturn’s control ceases and that of the sun becomes predominant. That limit, according to Prof. Asaph Hall’s calculation, is nearly 30,000,000 miles from Saturn’s center, while if our moon were removed to a distance a little exceeding 500,000 miles the earth would be in danger of losing its satellite through the elopement of Artemis with Apollo. Although, as already remarked, the satellites of Saturn are not especially interesting to the amateur telescopist, yet it may be well to mention that, in addition to Titan and Japetus, the satellite named Rhea, the fifth in order of distance from the planet, is not a difficult object for a three-or four-inch telescope, and two others considerably fainter than Rhea--Dione (the fourth) and Tethys (the third)--may be seen in favorable circumstances. The others--Mimas (the first), Enceladus (the second), and Hyperion (the seventh)--are beyond the reach of all but large telescopes. The ninth satellite, which has received the name of Phœbe, is much fainter than any of the others, its stellar magnitude being reckoned by its discoverer at about 15.5. Mars, the best advertised of all the planets, is nearly the least satisfactory to look at except during a favorable opposition, like those of 1877 and 1892, when its comparative nearness to the earth renders some of its characteristic features visible in a small telescope. The next favorable opposition will occur in 1907. [Illustration: MARS SEEN WITH A FIVE-INCH TELESCOPE.] When well seen with an ordinary telescope, say a four-or five-inch glass, Mars shows three peculiarities that may be called fairly conspicuous--viz., its white polar cap, its general reddish, or orange-yellow, hue, and its dark markings, one of the clearest of which is the so-called Syrtis Major, or, as it was once named on account of its shape, “Hourglass Sea.” Other dark expanses in the southern hemisphere are not difficult to be seen, although their outlines are more or less misty and indistinct. The gradual diminution of the polar cap, which certainly behaves in this respect as a mass of snow and ice would do, is a most interesting spectacle. As summer advances in the southern hemisphere of Mars, the white circular patch surrounding the pole becomes smaller, night after night, until it sometimes disappears entirely even from the ken of the largest telescopes. At the same time the dark expanses become more distinct, as if the melting of the polar snows had supplied them with a greater depth of water, or the advance of the season had darkened them with a heavier growth of vegetation.