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National Geographic : 1970 Aug
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August 1970 THE NATIONALGEOGRAPHICMAGAZINEVOL. 138, NO. 2 COPYRIGHT@ 1970 BYNATIONALGEOGRAPHICSOCIETY,WASHINGTON,D.C. INTERNATIONALCOPYRIGHTSECURED Voyage the Planets By KENNETH F. WEAVER Assistant Editor Paintings by LUDEK PESEK To take us in imagination to the farthest reaches of our solar system, the NATIONAL GEO GRAPHIC has teamed its award-winning science writer Kenneth F. Weaver with the noted Czech painter of astronomical subjects, Ludek Pesek. Their work reflects the knowledge gained from American and Soviet deep-space probes. It incorporates the latest think ing of leading U. S. authorities on each of the planets, and for their many contributions to the interest and accuracy of this presentation we are deeply grateful.-THE EDITOR I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, Out of Space-out of Time. -E DGAR ALLAN POE, "cDREAMLAND" A SSHEPHERDS OF OLD watched the starry arch of night wheel majestically overhead, they took comfort in the ap parent constancy of the heavens. Save for an occasional meteor whose brilliant trail flashed across the vault, each heavenly lamp stayed firmly fixed in its niche. Well, not quite all. Amid the thousands of naked-eye stars, several of the brightest disobeyed the usual pattern. Unaccountably and mysteriously, they drifted from night to night across the winking field of lights in their own fashion, coming and going. Some times they disappeared for weeks at a time. To some ancient shepherds, who in imagi nation saw a herdsman in the constellation Bojites, these five mavericks were stray ani mals. The Greeks called them planetes, or wanderers. The Romans gave them names of their gods: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. And from earliest recorded times, astrologers ascribed mystical qualities to these celestial bodies, as well as to the sun and the moon, teaching that they affected the destinies of nations and of kings. The Babylonians, who embraced the no tions of astrology, associated the planet Jupi ter with the god Marduk, a benign power. Saturn they linked to Ninurta, the god of war. Mars, whose ruddy color suggested blood, was a sign of Nergal, god of the underworld. A Babylonian clay tablet of about 700 B.C. warns: "When Ishtar [Venus] grows dim and disappears. ... there will be a slaughter.... When Ishtar appears.. . the crops of the land will be prosperous." Fancies such as these persisted through the centuries-in Greece, in Rome, in the Moslem East, in medieval Europe, and in to
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