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Asked by weirdboblet to Carol, Ellie, John, Philip, Rebecca on 28 Jun 2012.
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Carol White answered on 28 Jun 2012:
We can see 5 planets from Earth without a telescope, so the first people on Earth to look up at night really discovered them! Though they probably didn’t realise what they were looking at…
The Romans and Ancient Greeks definitely knew about the planets – that’s where we got the names from!
But going even further back, it was actually the Babylonians who first had a theory about planets. They were around in about 2000 to 1 BC and we’ve found proof that they were observing the Sun, the Moon Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn! Nobody discovered any more until the telescope was invented!
Uranus (William Herschel in 1781), Neptune (John Couch Adams in 1846) and Pluto (Clyde Tombaugh in 1930) all needed telescopes to be discovered.
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John Welford answered on 29 Jun 2012:
Carol has explained all the planets, but new ‘things’ are still being discovered in our solar system. In 2005 two tiny moons were discovered orbiting Pluto. Then in 2006 the classification of a planet was changed so that Pluto is classed as a “dwarf planet”!
This was because another dwarf planet named “Eris” was also discovered in 2005 that is larger than Pluto. There are a few other dwarf planets out there too, as well as various moons orbiting the planets. Probably most of the stuff in our solar system has been found now, but it’s still worth you keeping an eye out!
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Rebecca Lacey answered on 29 Jun 2012:
I would say that this was the Babylonians in about 2BC (a very long time ago!!)
The Babylonians had star catalogues and they identified the planets Mars, Venus, Mercury, Saturn and Jupiter. Pretty impressive!!
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