Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 August 1875 — Four Planets in Sight. [ARTICLE]

Four Planets in Sight.

Not often do the starry heavens show us four strongly-shining, Bright planets in one night, but this has been for some time past the position of Jupiter, Mars, Saturn and Venus. First conies into view thatgiant planet—that vast orb, whose diameter is eleven times and his volume about I*9oo times that of our owu globe—Jupiter, the planet of the mighty cloud envelopes, whose continued overshadowing of the Slanet himself has led oubt if telescopic vision has ever yet really penetrated these enormous layers of vapor to the surface of the planet itself. Jupiter is seen soon after dark almost difectly In the zenith, his position at eight o'clock being a little west and south of'it; and his slow and majestic sweep around the sun, which requires twelve of our years, scarcely better comports with his vast dimensions than does his apparent journey every night through the skies of earth. *He sets not far from midnight. Proctor believes Jupiter to be still a mass of seething, internal volcanic flop, giving out heat like a sun, and having but a very slight crust cooled as vet, and that subject to continual fiery outbursts and overflows; while the vast cloud belts, a thousand miles deep, arc either partly df volcanic origin, or are discharging upon the planet itself such floods of sulphur-charged ram as we cannot imagine. Mars next comes in sight. He rises red away in the southern part of the western horison soon after dusk, and by nine o'clock is a conspicuous object well up in the southern heavens, and easily distinguishable by his ruddy hue. It is‘a good time to scan Mars through a good telescope, for it will be two years before lie is again in so favorable a position as he has been in for the last month, and will be for a little time longer. That bright star of the ruddy hue that comes up almost in the southeast soon after dark is the neighbor world which, of all the planetary system, has presented the most interesting field for astronomical study, and l>Cst rewarded such studies. It is pretty definitely decided that this ruddy hue is due to some quality or characteristic of his soil. Mars, a smaller planet than Earth, presents a number of features that seem to warrant the conclusion that

his more general laws and features are something akin to those ol our own world Bfe lias an atmosphere; he has his season of winter and summer—the region of snow and ice around the southern pole annually and visibly decreasing and increasing m what may be summer and winter. There are on that distant world oceans and continents: this much at least is certain. Not such oceans as the Atlantic and Pacific, but strange, bottleshaped seas, of no great extent compared with Earth’s greatest. Whether they are ever frozen or not, nobody '6n earth yet knows, but it is Mr. Proctor’s belief that Mars, and older planets than ours, has gone far past his jieriod of greatest life, and is hist approaching, if he be not. already entering, the cold and lifeless eondition of such bodies as our moon, whose internal heat is exhausted. Later, rising wan and far, a pale but luminous ghost of a planet in the eastern sky, comes up great Saturn —the ringed world. This, on some accounts, is we most interesting studv of all the planets: chiefly because of the mobility and uncertainty of its occasionally shitting shape, and because of its giant illuminated rings and its eight attendant moons. Its enormous distance also invests it with a certain interest which would be wanting in a near object It is ascertained that "its density does not exceed that of water; and the probabilities seem to favor the conclusion that Saturn is still a globe of molten matter —a world of liquid fire. Its aspect seen on a clear night through a good glass, as the great lemon-colored planet, "girdled with its vast elliptic rings, goes sailing silently across the field of vision, is beaut Tful and interesting beyond that of any other. Much later—in fact iu the early dawn of the coming morning—Venus comes resplendently into view. Most brilliant of all the planets to us. because she is nearer to us and to the sun, this remarkable sister world, nearest and apparently most like our own world, is never more brilliant, never more beautiful, than when, as the morning star, she sheds the luster of her golden (but borrowed) beams upon the earth in the stillness of the clear morning. Venus will probably always be a difficult object of study, because of her proximity to the sun, but it is found that there are reasons for believing some of her mountains to be equal in height to the highest of our own world.— Hartford Times.