Having now a general idea of our celestial family, and an appreciation of the potent focus that controls it, let us make direct acquaintance with the several members of which it is composed.
CHAPTER V
THE PLANETS
A.—Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars
And now we are in the Solar System, at the center, or, better, at the focus of which burns the immense and dazzling orb. We have appreciated the grandeur and potency of the solar globe, whose rays spread out in active waves that bear a fecundating illumination to the worlds that gravitate round him; we have appreciated the distance that separates the Sun from the Earth, the third of the planets retained within his domain, or at least I trust that the comparisons of the times required by certain moving objects to traverse this distance have enabled us to conceive it.
We said that the four planets nearest to the Sun are Mercury, at a distance of 57 million kilometers (35,000,000 miles); Venus, at 108 million (67,000,000 miles); the Earth, at 149 million (93,000,000 miles); and Mars at 226 million (140,000,000 miles). Let us begin our planetary journey with these four stations.
MERCURY