As children of our age, we find it natural to think of the planets as cousins of the Earth: remote and taciturn, perhaps, but cousins nevertheless. To visit them is not a trip lightly undertaken, but we and our robots have done it. Men have walked on the Moon; live television pictures from Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune have graced millions of television screens around the world; and we know now that there are no little green men on Mars (although little green bacteria are not completely ruled out).

1. ▷ This name is pronounced “Tolemy”. His full name was Claudius Ptolomæus, and he lived in Alexandria during the second century AD. Little else is known of him.

Among all the exotic discoveries have been some very familiar sights: ice, dust storms, weather, lightning, erosion, rift valleys, even volcanos. Against this background, it may be hard for us to understand how special and mysterious the planets were to the ancients.