rst encounter:

MERCURY, VENUS, THE EARTH, AND MARS

These are the worlds that are nearest to the orb of day.

The four following, and much more remote, are, still in order of
distance:

JUPITER, SATURN, URANUS, AND NEPTUNE

This second group is separated from the first by a vast space occupied
by quite a little army of minute planets, tiny cosmic bodies, the
largest of which measures little more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) in
diameter, and the smallest some few miles only.

The planets which form these three groups represent the principal
members of the solar family. But the Sun is a patriarch, and each of his
daughters has her own children who, while obeying the paternal influence
of the fiery orb, are also obedient to the world that governs them.
These secondary asters, or _satellites_, follow the planets in their
course, and revolve round them in an ellipse, just as the others rotate
round the Sun. Every one knows the satellite of the Earth, the Moon. All
the other planets of our system have their own moons, some being even
more favored than ourselves in this respect, and having several. Mars
has two; Jupiter, five; Saturn, eight; Uranus, four; and Neptune, one
(at least as yet discovered).

In order to realize the relations between these worlds, we must
appreciate their distances by arranging them in a little table:

Distance in Distance in
Millions of Millions of
Kilometers. Miles.
Mercury 57 35
Venus 108 67
The Earth 149 93
Mars 226 140
Jupiter 775 481
Saturn 1,421 882
Uranus 2,831 1,755
Neptune 4,470 2,771

The Sun is at the center (or, more properly speaking, at the focus, for
the planets describe an ellipse) of this system, and controls them.
Neptune is thirty times farther from the Sun than the Earth. These
disparities of distance produce a vast difference in the periods of the
planetary revolutions; for while the Earth revolves round the Sun in a
year, Venus in 224 days, and Mercury in 88, Mars takes nearly 2 years to
accomplish his journey, Jupiter 12 years, Saturn 29, Uranus 84, and
Neptune 165.

Even the planets and their mo