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which it is named is often very slight. The seven bright stars of the Great Bear, for example, form a group which any observer would very soon notice and naturally make into a constellation, but the resemblance to a bear of these and the fainter stars of the constellation is sufficiently remote (see fig. 5), and as a matter of fact this part of the Bear has also been called a Waggon and is in America familiarly known as the Dipper; another constellation has sometimes been called the Lyre and sometimes also the Vulture. In very many cases the choice of stars seems to have been made in such an arbitrary manner, as to suggest that some fanciful figure was first imagined and that stars were then selected so as to represent it in some rough sort of way. In fact, as Sir John Herschel remarks, “The constellations seem to have been purposely named and delineated to cause as much confusion and inconvenience as possible. Innumerable snakes twine through long and contorted areas of the heavens where no memory can follow them; bears, lions, and fishes, large and small, confuse all nomenclature.” (Outlines of Astronomy, § 301.)

Fig. 5.—The Great Bear. From Bayer’s Uranometria (1603). [

To face p. 12.

The constellations as we now have them are, with the exception of a certain number (chiefly in the southern skies) which have been added in modern times, substantially those which existed in early Greek astronomy; and such information as we possess of the Chaldaean and Egyptian constellations shews resemblances indicating that the Greeks borrowed some of them. The names, as far as they are not those of animals or common objects (Bear, Serpent, Lyre, etc.), are largely taken from characters in the Greek mythology (Hercules, Perseus, Orion, etc.). The constellation Berenice’s Hair, named after an Egyptian queen of the 3rd century B.C., is one of the few which commemorate a historical personage.4

13. Among the constellations which first received names were those through which the sun passes in its annual circuit of the celestial sphere, that is those through which the ecliptic passes. The moon’s monthly path is also a great circle, never differing very much from the ecliptic, and the paths of the planets (§ 14) are such that they also are never far from the ecliptic. Consequently the sun, the moon, and the five planets were always to be found within a region of the sky extending about 8° on each side of the ecliptic. This strip of the celestial sphere was called the zodiac, because the constellations in it were (with one exception) named after living things (Greek ζῷον, an animal); it was divided into twelve equal parts, the signs of the zodiac, through one of which the sun passed every month, so that the position of the sun at any time could be roughly described by stating in what “sign” it was. The stars in each “sign” were formed into a constellation, the “sign” and the constellation each receiving the same name. Thus arose twelve zodiacal constellations, the names of which have come down to us with unimportant changes from early Greek times.5 Owing, however, to an alteration of the position of the equator, and consequently of the equinoctial points, the sign Aries, which was defined by Hipparchus in the second century B.C. (see chapter II., § 42) as beginning at the vernal equinoctial point, no longer contains the constellation Aries, but the preceding one, Pisces: and there is a corresponding change throughout the zodiac. The more precise numerical methods of modern astronomy have, however, rendered the signs of the zodiac almost obsolete: but the first point of Aries (♈), and the first point of Libra (♎), are still the recognised names for the equinoctial points.

In some cases individual stars also received special names, or were called after the part of the constellation in which they were situated, e.g. Sirius, the Eye of the Bull, the Heart of the Lion, etc.; but the majority of the present names of single stars are of Arabic origin (chapter III., § 64).

14. We have seen that the stars, as a whole, retain invariable positions on the celestial sphere,6 whereas the sun and moon change their positions. It was, however, discovered in prehistoric times that five bodies, at first sight barely distinguishable from the other stars, also changed their places. These five—Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn—with the sun and moon, were called planets,7 or wanderers, as distinguished from the fixed stars. 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.

Fig. 6.—The apparent path of Jupiter from Oct. 28, 1897, to Sept. 3, 1898. The dates printed in the diagram shew the positions of Jupiter.

15. The idea that some of the heavenly bodies are nearer to the earth than others must have been suggested by eclipses (§ 17) and occultations, i.e. passages of the moon over a planet or fixed star. In this way the moon would be recognised as nearer than any of the other celestial bodies. No direct means being available for determining the distances, rapidity of motion was employed as a test of probable nearness. Now Saturn returns to the same place among the stars in about 29-1∕2 years, Jupiter in 12 years, Mars in 2 years, the sun in one year, Venus in 225 days, Mercury in 88 days, and the moon in 27 days; and this order was usually taken to be the order of distance, Saturn being the most distant, the moon the nearest. The stars being seen above us it was natural to think of the most distant celestial bodies as being the highest, and accordingly Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars being beyond the sun were called superior planets, as distinguished from the two inferior planets Venus and Mercury. This division corresponds also to a difference in the observed motions, as Venus and Mercury seem to accompany the sun in its annual journey, being never more than about 47 and 29° respectively distant from it, on either side; while the other planets are not thus restricted in their motions.

Fig. 7.—The apparent path of Mercury from Aug. 1 to Oct. 3, 1898. The dates printed in capital letters shew the positions of the sun; the other dates shew those of Mercury.

16. One of the purposes to which applications of astronomical knowledge was first applied was to the measurement of time. As the alternate appearance and disappearance of the sun, bringing with it light and heat, is the most obvious of astronomical facts, so the day is the simplest unit of time.8 Some of the early civilised nations divided the time from sunrise to sunset and also the night each into 12 equal hours. According to this arrangement a day-hour was in summer longer than a night-hour and in winter shorter, and the length of an hour varied during the year. At Babylon, for example, where this arrangement existed, the length of a day-hour was at midsummer about half as long again as in midwinter, and in London it would be about twice as long. It was therefore a great improvement when the Greeks, in comparatively late times, divided the whole day into 24 equal hours. Other early nations divided the same period into 12 double hours, and others again into 60 hours.

The next most obvious unit of time is the lunar month, or period during which the moon goes through her phases. A third independent unit is the year. Although the year is for ordinary life much more important than the month, yet as it is much longer and any one time of year is harder to recognise than a particular phase of the moon, the length of the year is more difficult to determine, and the earliest known systems of time-measurement were accordingly based on the month, not on the year. The month was found to be nearly equal to 29-1∕2 days, and as a period consisting of an exact number of days was obviously convenient for most ordinary purposes, months of 29 or 30 days were used, and subsequently the calendar was brought into closer accord with the moon by the use of months containing alternately 29 and 30 days (cf. chapter II., § 19).

Both Chaldaeans and Egyptians appear to have known that the year consisted of about 365-1∕4 days; and the latter, for whom the importance of the year was emphasised by the rising and falling of the Nile, were probably the first nation to use the year in preference to the month as a measure of time. They chose a year of 365 days.

The origin of the week is quite different from that of the month or year, and rests on certain astrological ideas about the planets. To each hour of the day one of the seven planets (sun and moon included) was assigned as a “ruler,” and each day named after the planet which ruled its first hour. The planets being taken in the order already given (§ 15), Saturn ruled the first hour of the first day, and therefore also the 8th, 15th, and 22nd hours of the first day, the 5th, 12th, and 19th of the second day, and so on; Jupiter ruled the 2nd, 9th, 16th,

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