Judy Sudtelgte, age 12, Elkton, S.D., for her question:

Which planet was discovered first?

Mankind has been a star gazer since earliest times. Men were charting the paths of the heavenly bodies thousands of years before the dawn of modern history. The heavenly parade of stars and planets the eclipses of the sun and moon have been recorded from ancient times. Then, early in the 1600s, the telescope was invented and man's vision of the heavens was extended.

Without a telescope, we can see the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars. Jupiter and Saturn. These planets were known and named before modern history and no one would say which was discovered first, Uranus was discovered in 1781 and Neptune was discovered.in 1846. Little Pluto was discovered in 1930.