The subject of planetary perturbation was only just begun by Newton.
They knew it ought to be an ellipse if it was to serve to explain the planetary motion, and Hooke said he could prove that an ellipse it was; but he was nothing of a mathematician, and the others scarcely believed him.
The rings thrown off by the planetary gaseous masses as they contracted have now become satellites; except one ring which has remained without breaking up, and is to be seen rotating round Saturn still.
Here was evidently a case of planetary perturbation, and Laplace and Lagrange undertook the working of it out.
The great bulk of them will be of a planetary character--they will be attendant upon the sun.
Outside the seven planetary spheres, arranged one inside the other, was a still larger one in which were set the stars.
Planetary orbits to scale; showing the Asteroidal region between Jupiter and Mars.
Frameworks with inscribed and circumscribed spheres, representing the five regular solids distributed as Kepler supposed them to be among the planetary orbits.
But although the planetary paths might be roughly represented by a combination of circles, their speeds could not, on the hypothesis of uniform motion in each circle round the earth as a fixed body.
By such curves the planetary stations and retrogressions could be explained.
If for any reason the earth had to be placed out of the centre, the main planetary orbit was called an Excentric, and so on.
It is easy now to see how the Copernican system explains the main features of planetary motion, the stations and retrogressions, quite naturally and without any complexity.
We are therefore in utter ignorance whether the space between him and Mercury is occupied or not by some other denizen of the planetary system.
This glimpse merely of the external changes which happen on his surface made up the sum of our knowledge of that great luminary on which the animation of our planetary system depends!
As long as the earth was thought to be the centre of the planetary system there was nothing but confusion in the heavens.
A dewdrop is rounded by the same laws which shape the planetary spheres or the sun himself; and Christians but half trust Christ if they do not imitate Him.
But the modern science of planetary Astronomy consists of deductions from the law of gravitation--deductions showing why the celestial bodies necessarily occupy certain places at certain times.
Next below this Solar Deity, yet also in some mysterious manner part of Him, come His seven Ministers sometimes called the Planetary Spirits.
Without a planetary medium there could be no system of planets.
A circulating medium of constantly-increasing radius, appears indispensably necessary for the purpose of conveying solar matter through the regions of space, and for the maintaining all planetary motion in the same uniform direction.
Whereas a medium as dense as molten gold, could produce no such disorder as long as impulse is greater than resistance; which the long-continuance and order of planetary motion strongly seem to indicate is the case.
Pressure being obviously the cause of planetary motion, so is it of all terrestrial motion.
Duration is the continuance in existence of finite creatures, a continuance which is measured by the equable motion of planetary orbs, and imperfectly by phenomenal changes in our mental states.
The latter assumption is certainly in conflict with well-determined geological facts; and there is no a priori ground for assuming that the planetary spaces are void and empty.
Thus the inexorable laws of mechanics indicate that the store of force in our planetary system, which can only suffer loss and not gain, must be finally exhausted.
A necessitated goodness can no more command our moral esteem than the uniform revolution of the planetary orbs, and where there is no moral esteem, there can be no love, no worship, and no praise.
As Bunsen remarks, "Law is the supreme rule of the universe, and this law is Intellect, is Reason, whether viewed in the formation of a planetary system or the organization of a worm.
The present aspect of this planetary system is, however, but a passing phase in the history of its fleeting life.
Work; laws of equilibrium and of motion; free and constrained motion of solids; motion of projectiles; planetary motions and the general principles of physical astronomy.
Martis (1609) stated his laws of planetary motion, to the effect that the orbits of the planets are ellipses with the sun at a focus, and that the radii vectores drawn from the sun to the planets describe equal areas in equal times.
According to the laws which govern planetary bodies, those which are nearest to the planet will travel more quickly than those which are further away.
It is one of the most marvellous of all the features of our planetary system.
No wonder the comet gave evidence of violent excitement, coming from the cold region outside the planetary system torpid and ice-bound.
Vast as are the intervals between ourselves and our planetary neighbours, they are as nothing to the space that separates us from the nearest of the steady shining fixed stars.
This we judge because they exercise no sort of influence on any of the planetary bodies they draw near to, which they certainly would do if they were made of any kind of solid matter.
No fairy tale could stir the imagination so powerfully as the thought of such systems including a planetary body as large or larger than its sun or suns.
As science has advanced, the idea that these faraway suns must have planetary attendants as our sun has been discarded.
That seems a stupendous time, but it is nothing compared with the time needed to form a nebula into a planetary system.
Fourier, temperature of the terrestrial globe and planetary spaces, xxxii, 1.
Mapping out all the planetarymovements back for uncounted ages--roughly, crudely, of course, but the best I was able to.
In fact, yourplanetary system was itself the result of a catastrophe, or of what might have been a catastrophe, had the two great suns collided whose near approach caused the wrenching off of your planets.
Before you have solved their mysteries, this earth where you first saw them may be a vitrified slag, or a vapor diffused through the planetary spaces.
I swear to you, Sir, I believe that these two centres of civilization are just exactly the two points that close the circuit in the battery of our planetary intelligence!
There are, no doubt, also divers astral complications arising out of Saturn's place in the planetary system.
All this is very difficult to reconcile with legends arising out of the simple worship of a celestial luminary, but perfectly consistent with the supposition of the patriarch Noah, after deification, being located in the planetary system.
The ether, the sun, the moon, and still more the five planetary gods, are something above and beyond those parts of nature.
I took off my handsome wedding garment, and as soon as it was dusk we crept out, and went away to Marcoline's lodging in a hackney coach, carrying with us the planetary offerings which I had gained so cleverly.
Only a simple suffumigation," said the Baronet, "accompanied by availing ourselves of the suitable planetary hour.
Similarly, the theory of the evolution of the planetary system, in that it requires the assumption of particular distances and particular masses for the parts of the primeval nebula, is more arbitrary than rational dynamics.
The planetary system, on the other hand, does not pursue ideals, but moves unconscious of itself, with a mechanical precision that can be expressed in a mathematical formula; and is representative of another kind of reality and power.
Or is there an underlying power, like purpose, fundamentally and permanently governing the planetary system and all celestial worlds, in spite of the apparent control of blind and irresistible forces?
That which is not like the planetary system must be construed as mechanical by indirection and subtlety.
And whereas I had before said to myself: 'If now a wave from the Deep has washed over this planetary ship of earth.
I thought to myself: If now a wave from the Deep has washed over this planetaryship of earth, and I, who alone happened to be in the extreme bows, am the sole survivor of that crew?
It was that sort of blind faith which still held the Planetary Union together.
A product of the educational philosophy of the Planetary Union, Dirrul was thoroughly adjusted and decidedly aware of both his own abilities and shortcomings.
They wallowed in the same luxury and comfort enjoyed by the rest of the Planetary Union.
As you are well aware the space-pilot is the politician--statesman is a better word--of the Planetary Union.
Glenna and Hurd weren't after the entire Planetary Union, Paul--that's out of the question.
Much as it benefited the Movement the laxity of Agronian security was one of the chief reasons why Dirrul scorned the Planetary Union.
It was one of the new Dragon design--compact, efficient, faster than anything built by the Planetary Union, protected by sixteen circular batteries and yet small enough to be handled by one man.
The Planetary Union hasn't a ship that could make it under sixty!
They were from the faculty of the Advanced Air University, elderly, respected and distinguished, names known for a generation everywhere in the Planetary Union.
The Planetary Union had been formed and members of the Vininese Confederacy invited to join it.
Since that time relations between the Planetary Union and the Vininese Confederacy had steadily improved--at least in appearance.
And the rest of the Planetary Union will go to war!
The pilot was instructed to wait fifteen planetary revolutions in the event that I might have a report to send back to Headquarters.
In ninety-five days he had reached the mythical border in space, which divided the territory of the Planetary Union and the Vininese Confederacy.
The main central body of all, retreating ever within as it dropped in its course the raw material of the planetary masses, has formed, at last, the sun, the great ruler and luminary of our system.
It was possible to accept cosmical evolution and solar evolution and planetary evolution, without at the same time accepting evolution in the restricted field of life and mind.
