Excerpt from Meteoric Astronomy: A Treatise on Shooting-Stars, Fire-Balls, and Aerolites The solar system consists Of the sun, together with the planets and comets which revolve around him as the center of their motions. The sun is the great controlling orb Of this system, and the source Of light and heat to its various members. Its magnitude is one million four hun dred thousand times greater than that of the earth, and it contains more than seven hundred times as much matter as all the planets put together. Mercury is the nearest planet to the sun its mean dis tance being about thirty-seven millions Of miles. Its diam eter is about three thousand miles, and it completes its orbital revolution in 88 days. Venus, the next member of the system, is sometimes our morning and sometimes our evening star. Its magnitude is almost exactly the same as that Of the earth. 'it revolves round the sun in 225 days. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.