Page:A short history of astronomy(1898).djvu/59

§§ 14, 15] Mercury is never seen except occasionally near the horizon just after sunset or before sunrise, and in a climate like ours requires a good deal of looking for; and it is rather remarkable that no record of its discovery should exist. Venus is conspicuous as the Evening Star or as the Morning Star. The discovery of the identity of the Evening and Morning Stars is attributed to Pythagoras (6th century B.C.), but must almost certainly have been made earlier, though the Homeric poems contain references to both, without any indication of their identity. Jupiter is at times as conspicuous as Venus at her brightest, while Mars and Saturn, when well situated, rank with the brightest of the fixed stars.

The paths of the planets on the celestial sphere are, as we have seen (§ 13), never very far from the ecliptic; but whereas the sun and moon move continuously along their paths from west to east, the motion of a planet is sometimes from west to east, or direct, and sometimes from east to west, or retrograde. If we begin to watch a planet when it is moving eastwards among the stars, we find that after a time the motion becomes slower and slower, until the planet hardly seems to move at all, and then begins to move with gradually increasing speed in the opposite direction; after a time this westward motion becomes slower and then ceases, and the planet then begins to move eastwards again, at first slowly and then faster, until it returns to its original condition, and the changes are repeated. When the planet is just reversing its motion it is said to be stationary, and its position then is called a stationary point. The time during which a planet's motion is retrograde is, however, always considerably less than that during which it is direct; Jupiter's motion, for example, is direct for about 39 weeks and retrograde for 17, while Mercury's direct motion lasts 13 or 14 weeks and the retrograde motion only about 3 weeks (see figs. 6, 7). On the whole the planets advance from west to east and describe circuits round the celestial sphere in periods which are different for each planet. The explanation of these irregularities in the planetary motions was long one of the great difficulties of astronomy.

15. The idea that some of the heavenly bodies are