The children's book of stars; . he asteroids circle roundthe sun. As each one is detached from its neighbourand obeys its own impulses, there is none of thestrain and wrench there would be were they aUconnected. According to the laws which governplanetary bodies, those which are nearest to theplanet wiU travel more quickly than those whichare further away. Of course, as we look at themfrom so great a distance, and as they are moving,they appear to us to be continuous. It is conjecturedthat the comparative darkness of the inside ring iscaused by the fact that there are fewer of the bodiesthere
The children's book of stars; . he asteroids circle roundthe sun. As each one is detached from its neighbourand obeys its own impulses, there is none of thestrain and wrench there would be were they aUconnected. According to the laws which governplanetary bodies, those which are nearest to theplanet wiU travel more quickly than those whichare further away. Of course, as we look at themfrom so great a distance, and as they are moving,they appear to us to be continuous. It is conjecturedthat the comparative darkness of the inside ring iscaused by the fact that there are fewer of the bodiesthere to reflect the sunlight. Then, in addition tothe rings, enough themselves to distinguish himfrom aU other planets, there are the ten moonsof richly-endowed Saturn to be considered. Itis difficult to gather much about these moons, onaccount of our great distance from them. The largestis probably twice the diameter of our own of them seems to be much brighter—that isto say, of higher reflecting power—on one side than. FOUR LARGE WORLDS 79 the other, and by distinguishing the sides andwatching carefully, astronomers have come to theconclusion that it presents always the same faceto Saturn in the same way as our own moon doesto us; in fact, there is reason to think that all themoons of large planets do this. AU the moons lie outside the rings, and someat a very great distance from Saturn, so that theycan only appear small as seen from him. Yet at theworst they must be brighter than ordinary stars, andadd greatly to the variations in the sky scenery of thisbeautiful planet. In connection with Saturns moonsthere is another of those astonishing facts that arecontinually cropping up to remind us that, howevermuch we know, there is such a vast deal of whichwe are stiU ignorant. So far in dealing with all theplanets and moons in the solar system we havemade no remark on the way they rotate or revolve,because they all go in the same direction, andthat direction is called coun
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectastronomy, bookyear19
