Solar System in fiction Solar System in fiction The Solar System and its various bodies (planets, asteroids, moons, etc.) were the earliest objects to be treated as fictional locations in works of science fiction. Among these, imaginary voyages to and explorations of Earth's Moon are found in seventeenth century literature. By the early twentieth century, following the increase in scientific and technological development spurred by the Industrial Revolution, fictional journeys to (or from) the Solar System's other planets had become common in fiction. Early literature regarding the Solar System, following scientific speculations dating back to the 17th century, assumed that every planet hosted its
Discovery and exploration of the Solar System Domenico Cassini later discovered four more moons of Saturn and the Cassini division in Saturn's rings. Edmond Halley realised in 1705 that repeated sightings of a comet were recording the same object, returning regularly once every 75–76 years. This was the first evidence that anything other than the planets orbited the Sun. Around this time (1704), the term "Solar System" first appeared in English. In 1781, William Herschel was looking for binary stars in the constellation of Taurus when he observed what he thought was a new comet. Its orbit revealed that it was a new planet, Uranus, the first