My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles?

The phrase in the headline describes, in amusing and memorable terms, the planets rotating around our Sun. Astronomers have been finding these planets one by one as their means to examine the heavens have improved and advanced over time. They ended up with nine planets (though the farthest and smallest, Pluto, has now been demoted from true planet status.)

They created an interesting sentence that had words which started with the first letters of the planets in sequence. It was “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles.�

I here list the names of the planets and how they received their names:

Mercury appears to move very swiftly and it was named for the winged Roman god of travel. Mercury being so close to the Sun is very hot. It has no satellites.

Venus’ name came from the goddess of love. When first seen, and even today, Venus has been considered to be the brightest and most beautiful planet, or star, in our heaven. It is also hot, and lacks satellites.

Earth’s name came from the Indo-European language base. It was produced from the Germanic name “erthoâ€� and then German “erde,â€� and Dutch “aurde,â€� Danish and Swedish “jordâ€� and the English word “earth.â€� The Greeks used the name “erazeâ€� which meant “on the ground.â€� The Welsh used “erwâ€� which meant “field.â€�  Earth has one satellite, and that is, of course, the moon.

Mars, because of its blood-red color, was named by the Romans for their god of war. The Egyptians gave it a different name, “Her Desher� which means “the red one.� Other civilizations joined the Romans in their naming of Mars. Mars has two satellites, one named Phobus for one of the horses that drew Mars’ chariot, and the other named Deimos for one of Mars’ companions.

Jupiter, the largest and most massive of the solar system’s planets, was named Zeus by the Greeks and Jupiter by the Romans. Jupiter’s satellites are named after mythological characters who have some relationship to Zeus. There are more than 60 satellites rotating around Jupiter and 24 of them still have not been named. These satellites have been examined by a number of space shuttles during the past years. The satellites have some very interesting characteristics and astronomers would like very much to be able to land on them and roam around.

Saturn was the Roman name for the Greek god of farming. It has fewer satellites than Jupiter and some of its satellites were named for Titans. Titans, according to Greek mythology, were the brothers and sisters of Saturn. Some of its newest satellites were named after Eskimo giants. An additional satellite which was discovered in the year 2003 is not yet named. Astronomers continue searching for satellites rotating around these planets and they find some little by little now. One of the interesting names of a satellite is Prometheus, who was a Titan, and who gave many gifts to humanity. There is Janus, a two-faced Roman God who could look forward and backward at the same time. And Helene, a daughter of Zeus. (You can see that Zeus was an important character for the satellites.) And there were 12 satellites discovered in the year 2000. As you can see there seems to be no end to searching the planets for satellites and for other things. So far 30 satellites have been discovered.

Uranus was named for the Greek god of the sky. It’s interesting that astronomer William Lassell, back in 1851, discovered two of the satellites of Uranus and named the satellites after characters in the work of William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. At present there are about 21 satellites discovered that are circling the planet.

Neptune is the eighth planet, a blue one, and it was named after the Roman god of the sea. Astronomers have located 13 satellites rotating around Neptune so far and five recently discovered satellites are still unnamed.  

Pluto has been the ninth planet but several years ago it was removed from the list of planets because it was too small to really be a part of the planetary group. It was named after the Roman god of the underworld who was able, according to legend, to render himself invisible. Pluto has one satellite rotating around it.

In 1610, Galileo stared into space with his unique 20-power telescope and he saw four satellites circling the planet Jupiter. One of them, named Europa, had a surface similar to the moon circling our own earth. As astronomers examined Europa over the years they discovered that it had frozen water on its surface, with a few craters. Frozen sulfuric acid has also been found on its surface. Although the temperature is colder than minus-100 degrees centigrade, astronomers believe that there can be micro-life existing on that satellite. NASA has investigated the content and will do even more exploration of the surface of Europa in the future.

Sidney X. Shore is a scientist, inventor and educator who lives in Salisbury and holds more than 30 U.S. patents.