Blogs

earth

About me: Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the fifth largest: orbit: 149,600,000 km (1.00 AU) from Sun diameter: 12,756.3 km mass: 5.972e24 kg Planet Earth Amazing pictures of Earth from space combine useful science and artistic beauty. Orbit : Nasa Astronauts Photograph the Earth A beautiful coffee table book. Kids often ask me which is my favorite planet. My answer is always "Earth". This book shows why. Earth is the only planet whose English name does not derive from Greek/Roman mythology. The name derives from Old English and Germanic. There are, of course, hundreds of other names for the planet in other languages. In Roman Mythology, the goddess of the Earth was Tellus - the fertile soil (Greek: Gaia, terra mater - Mother Earth). It was not until the time of Copernicus (the sixteenth century) that it was understood that the Earth is just another planet. Mir and Earth's limb Mir space station and Earth's limb Earth, of course, can be studied without the aid of spacecraft. Nevertheless it was not until the twentieth century that we had maps of the entire planet. Pictures of the planet taken from space are of considerable importance; for example, they are an enormous help in weather prediction and especially in tracking and predicting hurricanes. And they are extraordinarily beautiful.