Mike Frossard, age11 of Anderson, IA, for his question:

In what order were the planets discovered?

Mercury Venus Mars Jupiter and Saturn have been known since earliest times. They can be see with the naked eye and our stargazing ancestors ware tracing their paths in the sky long before the dawn of recorded history. The rest of the planets had to wait for the invention of the telescope before they could be discovered.

The planet Uranus was discovered in 1781 by William Herschel of England. The event was so important that Herschel was knighted by the king and given money to build a bigger and better. telescope  which he did. Neptune was discovered in the year 1846, though several astronomers had an idea that it existed and where it was before this time. Little Pluto, peddling around the outer rim of the Solar Systems was pinpointed on January 30, 1930.