Transcriber’s notes: The text of this book has been preserved as in the original, apart from a few obvious misspellings. Corrected misspellings and redundancies include the following: comparsion —> comparison dining —> during clamly —> calmly atronomer —> astronomer oi —> of the —> (deleted) a —> (deleted) In this digital version, paired underscores denote _italicised text_. Footnotes have been positioned below the relevant paragraphs. The text contains symbols that will not necessarily display correctly with all viewing devices, and one symbol (for the Full Moon) cannot be replicated digitally. It is represented in this text by an open circle. For best viewing, the device’s character encoding should be set to Unicode (UTF-8), and a Unicode font selected such as Arial Unicode MS, DejaVu, Segoe UI Symbol or FreeSerif. [Illustration: A WHIRLING SPIRAL NEBULA, TYPICAL OF THAT FROM WHICH THE SUN AND PLANETS WERE PROBABLY EVOLVED In the process of evolution the dense center becomes the controlling sun and the smaller spots of condensation form the planets. This particular nebula lies just under the end of the handle of the Big Dipper. It was photographed at Mt. Wilson Observatory.] THE WAYS OF THE PLANETS BY MARTHA EVANS MARTIN, A.M. AUTHOR OF “THE FRIENDLY STARS” [Illustration] NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS MCMXII COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY HARPER & BROTHERS PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1912 CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. ON MAKING ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE PLANETS 1 II. OUR RELATION TO THE PLANETS 11 III. WHAT THE PLANETS ARE, AND WHAT THEY APPEAR TO BE 17 IV. THE ORIGIN OF THE PLANETS 26 V. THE SEVEN GREAT PLANETS 38 VI. THE MOVEMENTS OF THE PLANETS 46 VII. HOW THE INFERIOR PLANETS SEEM TO MOVE 56 VIII. HOW THE SUPERIOR PLANETS SEEM TO MOVE 65 IX. THE PATH OF THE PLANETS 71 X. MERCURY--WHEN AND WHERE TO FIND MERCURY--DISTANCE AND BRIGHTNESS--MERCURY’S SIZE AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF IT-- WHAT THE SUN DOES FOR MERCURY--TRANSITS 93 XI. VENUS--WHEN AND WHERE TO SEE VENUS--DISTANCE AND BRILLIANCY--VENUS’S LIKENESS TO THE EARTH--ATMOSPHERE, DAY AND NIGHT, AND SEASONS--TRANSITS 122