FOR OUR BOYS & GIRLS

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 466, 26 April 1890, Page 3

FOR OUR BOYS & GIRLS

MRS FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. [COPYRIGHT.] [Abb Rigiits Reserved.]

How the Stars were Named.

By Sir Robert Babb, ASTRONOMER ROYAB FOR IREBAND. I propose in this little paper to discuss some points which' seem specially interesting with respect to the. names of the celesal bodies! The general subject of the nomenclature of the heavens would be far too wide to enter upon. I must therefore confine what 1 have to say to a comparatively few objects, and it will be natural that these should be the globes belonging to our own system. The study of the stars in ancient days possessed an importance of a wholly different kind from thatwhichwenowattributeto it. As the sunwasof suchutilty to mankind, and as the moon contributed not a little to our welfare by mitigating the darkness of night, and by raising the tides for our seaports, it was natural to think that the other heavenly bodies must also have a significant jelation to human concerns. In early days the nature of the celestial bodies was hot understood as we understand it now. It- was not then supposed that among the stars there could be worlds comparable in importance with our - globe.. In the belief of the ancients our earth was the central body of the* universe. The sun, moon, and the stars were- merely regarded as objects placed in • the - heavens for the purpose of ministering to human wants. The relations of the sun and moon to the inhabitants of the earth were of course obvious, but the other bodies also had their terrestrial influences which were to be discovered by occult science.. Accordingly a system of astrology was created for the

purpose of interpreting the movements of the stars. It is perhaps hardly necessary to say thab we now only regard these notions of the old astrologers as curiosities. We remember that our earth occupies but an insignificant point of space, and that the stars and planets are generally globes far greater thaij that on which we dwell. The movements of the heavenly bodies are no longer believed to contain indications of human affairs. We do not cast the horoscope, nor do we now think that the career of a man is de. cided by configuration of the planets at the moment he happened to bo born. It is, however, interesting to note the different" ways in which .traces of the old astrological beliefs still survive amongst us. In; former days, when any great undertaking was in contemplation, the stars Were eon-? suited to know if the auspices w§re favour-: able. Though we do nob at the present day think this 1 necessary, yet we do at least admit thab we ought carefully to consider the proepeets of the enterprise. Astrology has provided us with a word, for “ consider ” is derived from the Latin word sidus, a star, and signifies literally that we consult the stars. Should the undertaking not turn out fortunately, we often describe ib as ill-starred, and here we recognise that a good star has nob favoured our efforts, bub thab they have been under the malign influence of an evil one. When a serious misfortune occurs we may sometime* speak of ib as a disaster. This is a word derived from the Greek, and signifies that our star has been unfavourable. Need 1 add thab ib is the same Greek root thab gives us the first half of the word astronomy.

Remembering the importance of the stars to the ancient astrologers it is not unnatural to find that they watched them with the closest attention. They observed that the sun and moon changed their places on the heavens, so that these bodies were fitly deBceibed as ‘wanderers.’ The rest of the heavenly host are mainly composed of the fixed stars as we generally call them, to distinguish between the bodies that do not move and the planets. From the remotest antiquity it seems to have been known that there were some few stars like objects which moved about. Of these the earliest to be observed was doubtless the planet Venus; her brilliancy as the evening star or the morning star seems to have attracted attention from all intelligent nations of which we have any record. As Venus continuously changed its place, and so far resembled the sun and the moon,the astrologers credited this planet with a significant intervention in terrestrial mattere. But there were other planets also tobediscernedby thosewhocarefully watched thesky. Three brightobjects, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars, showed by their movements that they were bodies wholly different from ordinary stars. The list of planets known to the aDcientswascompleted by the discoveryof Mercury. Itis impossible co reflect on this achievement without admiring the acuteness of observation which disclosed the nature of this rarely seen object, and identified its successive appearances. Mercury seems to have been discovered in d ependen tly by two or three nations atdates antecedent to those of exact history. It will thus be seen that there were in all five planets, namely,- Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mars, and Mercury. ■ If to these we add the sun and the moon we have the total seven ‘wanderers ’ with which the astrologers used to conduct their mystic operations. There is no doubt that the ancient significance of the number seven is attributable to the fact that there were believed to be neither more nor less than seven of these bodies. The most striking illustration that we can give of the survival of astrological notions is to get further connection between the names of the seven days of the week and the names of the seven wanderers. In facb, it appears that the use of a week of seven days has been confined to those races who had recognised these seven planets. The Incas or ancient inhabitants of Peru seemed to have-detected no other planet than Venus, and' their week had nine days, to accord apparently with one-third of the duration of the moon’s revolution around the earth. The Aztecs of Mexico, who were also in ignorance of the planets, VOnus alone excepted, employed a weelr of thirteen days. Among ten ancient nations of the old world, nob only the number of the days in theweek, but the names of those days were associated with the names of the seven wanderers, to . which they respectively corresponded. The ancient astronomers, though wholly ignoranb of the true relations of the celestial bodies, had yet been enabled to arrange the wanderers in their true order of distance from the earth, at least in so far as it is possible to place bodies in such an order when their distances are nceesantly changing. The dimness of

•Saturn and the slowness of his movements justified them in regarding him as the most remote of the seven. Next came Jupiter, and then came Mars. It is to be remembered that according to the ancients the sun was classified as a wanderer with the bodies we now speak, of as planets. His distance- was less than that of Mar 3, and greater than that of Venus. Mercury was nearer to us than Venus, while the moon was the nearest body of all to the earth. We thus write the seven wanderers, in order of their distances, as follows : Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. This is not, however, the order in which these planets stand when they represent the seven days of the week. The succession of the week days is afrived at in the way we shall now mention. In ancient times the day and night together were divided as at present into twenty - four hours. Each one of these hours was consecrated to one of the planets. The order in which the hours unappropriated to the different wanderers was simply the order of their distances,and each day bore the name of the wanderer to which its first hour was related. As a beginning the first hour is consecrated to the most distant object, Saturn, and accordingly the- . corresponding day,is Saturn day, or Saturday ; the second hour belongs to Jupiter, the third to Mars, the fourth to the Sun, the fifth to Venus, the sixth to Mercury, and the seventh to the Moon. Then the eighth hour begins with Saturn again, the ninth with Jupiter, and so on until after twenty-one hours this list of the wanderers has been repeated three times over. The twenty-second hour begins of course with Saturn again, the twenty-third belongs to Jupiter, the twenty-fourth to Mars, and thus the whole twenty-four hours of Saturday are complete. The twenty-fifth hour, which is the first hour of the next day falls on the wanderer next to Mars, that is on the sun. The first hour of the day next after Saturday is accordingly consecrated to the sun and as the name of each day is derived from that of its first hour it follows that the name of the day following Saturday is to be the day of the sun, that is, of course, Sunday. You may follow the same calculation throughout. The following is an equivalent but shorter process. Write the names of the seven wanderers in the order of their distances arourlS' a circle, and then read them by beginning with- Saturn, and skipping two each time. They will come into the following order: Saturn, Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and then Saturn again. Now we have reached the precise order of the days in the week. The meanings of Saturday and Sunday we have already explained. Monday is Moonday, and the French Lundi means also tho day of the moon. Tuesday is connected with Mars ; in fact, the French word Mardi, meaning Tuesday, is obviously Mar’s day. Wednesday or Mercredi in French is Mercury day. . Thursday is derived from Thorz, a deity identical with Jupiter. Friday is pecularly shown to be the day of Venus. Thus nob only the seven' days of the week, bub the very names of the days themselves are directly related to the names of the seven planets. lb is a question of much interesb as to why the names of heathen deities. should have been assigned to the' placets’.' -How comes it, for instance, that the god Jupiter should have. ,given a name .bo - the greatplanet. The question, is not without some difficulty, bub the origin of it appears to be as follows There areat'thC present day—; and doubtless ever have been—races.who worshipped the sun-'as a Considering that the sun:was'-.only one.of the" seven wanderere, it was not unnatural -that: tional homag9should also have been.rendered to the other similar bodies. This is all the more natural because the movements, of these bodies were believed to be intimately associated with human affairs. That globe which we now style the planet Jupiter was itself regarded as a deity, and as such was worshipped. A more refined creed afterwards separated the intangible deity from the actual globe, which thus came to be regarded merely as a symbol. The name, however, by which the planet was designated was borne both by the material body and by the deity of which that body was an emblem.

Tn modern days the naming of planets is quite a familiar operation. Every now and then anew planet is discovered!,and. ib is the privilege of the discoverer to assign bo the new object a name which other astronomers shall recognise. At least this is generally the case, but nob invariably, for when William Herschel immortalised himself by discovering the planet now called Uranus, he proposed to name it the Georgium Sidus, in honour of King George the Third. As this was the first planet ever found in addition to the five bodies of this kind which had been known from all antiquity,a wonderful interest was groused among astronomers all over the world, but the old planets had borne the old classical names, and it was thought, especially by continental astronomers, thab it would be a little incongruous to bring the name of George the Third into the same category as the heathen divinities. Accordingly, they set aside the wishes of the discoverer and established the precedent which has since been generally followed by choosing names for the newly-discovered planets from classical mythology. Though the number of the planets is now approaching 300, yet the resources of ancient literature seem nob yet to give signs of exhaustion. Let Hebs, and Hecuba, Dione, and Sappho, which I select at random from the list of minor planets, serve as modern examples of how the heavenly bodies are named.