The Planets, Personified

How Medieval Europeans envisioned celestial bodies

As an avid reader of science fiction and nonfiction authors like Carl Sagan, I was more excited for astronomy class than any other science offering at my high school. I felt ready to feel awe at the mysteries of the universe and perhaps even unlock its secrets.

This class was unique because, a few times over the course of the semester, we had to come to school at night and perform observations through fancy-looking telescopes that belonged to the school. I’d never used a telescope that wasn’t a children’s toy before. I suppose I should have known better, but I really expected to see some amazing things through that eyepiece.

Unfortunately, the whole experience was a bit of a dud. We got a great view of the moon, but when we trained our telescopes on the planets, we saw, well, some dots that were slightly bigger than the dots we could see with our naked eyes.

It was all quite underwhelming, and I had a hard time convincing myself that these (thanks to the telescope, slightly larger) dot…