Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1877 — The Great Planet Jupiter. [ARTICLE]

The Great Planet Jupiter.

Jupiter was at his brightest on the night of June 19, when he was exactly opposite the sun, and eamfT to the south at midnight. /• - < Jupiter isfthe fifth of the great planets in order off distance from the sun; out earth being’ the third. Mercury is the first, traveling nearest to the sun. Venus is the second, and travels inside the earth's path. Next outside the earth’s pass is that of Mars. Outside his track there come the paths of a number of very small planets traveling in a ring around the sud. More than 170 of these have al ready been discovered; but all these together (beside hundreds more of the family not yet discovered) do not weigh so much as the tenth of our earth. Outside thia family of many congregated plan-

eta, all together scarcely enough to make a single respectable planet, comes Jupiter, outweighing not only all tbete—not only these with our earth, Mare, Venus and Mercury thrown in—but all the ether planets taken together, no less than two and a half times. Jupiter exceeds our earth 300 times in mass or quantity of matter. But, enormous though this excess of mass majl seem, it is small compared with his excess of size; for he exceeds the earth 1,283 times in volume, k is only because he travels so much farther away than either Venus or Msrs that he ap. pears less bright than Venus, and not many times brighter than Mars. For these two planets are utterly insignificant compared with him, both in size and mass. But he travels more than five times farther from the sun than the earth goes, so that even at his nearest and brightest, his distance from us exceeds four times our distance from the sun; whereas, when Mars is at his nearest, his distance from us is not much more than one-third of our distance from the sun.— Prof. R. A. Proctor, in St. Nicholas for July.