Early astronomers called planets 'wandering stars'. Were they wrong?

Answer 1

no

The word star comes to us from the Greek "aster" which is quite a general term, meaning anything in the sky, above the atmosphere that gives off light. It included stars, the Moon, the Sun, etc. The study of these objects and of the meaning of their movements was called astrology. It was believed that each wanderer was controlled by a god and that its complicated (apparent) movement was designed to give us messages.

They believed that all stars were fixed, except for seven of them that wandered among the others (aster planetes = stars that travel, stars that wander). These were the Sun (Helios), the Moon (Selene), Mercury (Hermes), Venus (Aphrodite), Mars (Ares), Jupiter (Zeus) and Saturn (Chronos). We now know them under their Latin names (when the Greek culture was taken to Rome).

It is from the Greek word for "wandering" (planetes) that we got our modern word planet.

If you were to look at the sky even today, over long periods of time you would notice that the apparent position of these seven objects do vary when compared to the "fixed stars". They are still wandering.

It is just that we now have much better theories to explain why and how, and to predict their positions. Also, we have found a lot of wandering things in the sky; so many that we have reviewed -- many times -- the modern definition of the words planet, satellite, exoplanet, star, asteroid ("looks like a star")...

-----

Things that were clearly inside the atmosphere were called "meteors" (clouds, lightning, rain) and the science dealing with these objects was called meteorology.

Because the sky was thought to be unchanging (except for the "wanderers") shooting stars were believed to be an atmospheric phenomena; that is why they were called meteors.

Astrology became astronomy when it was found that the movement of planets was not intended to convey messages from the gods.

Answer 2

No, they were not wrong. They did not know these points of light were planets. When they viewed these objects each night throughout the year they noticed these points of light would move, or "wander" through the night sky. They knew that the stars normally stayed in the same place all the time and moved through the sky together in patterns (constellations).
When they viewed the planets they found that a point of light appeared at night that was extremely bright and would only rise to a certain height in the western sky then would begin to move back to the horizon until it disappeared. Then a few months later a bright star would again begin to rise again, only in the morning sky.
They called these points of light wandering stars, today we know this wandering star as Venus. Planet is derived from the term Wanderer.

Answer 3

In one way they were wrong.
The stars seam to stay in a fixed position, where the planets are constantly moving, the reason the called the planets wandering stars is because they will appear to move in one direction, then appear to move in the opposite detection.
I hope this answered you question.

Answer 4

They were, but it was a reasonable guess based on the evidence without math analysis. The planets weren't stars and while they moved relative to other stars, they did not wander.

Answer 5

Yes, they are planets not stars, but they called them that because of what is called retrograd motion. At certain times the planets appear to move backward. Until Kepler came along this caused a lot of confusion.

Answer 6

From thier viewpoint..no. They didnt have an understanding of the mechanics of the solar system. So the planets werent "fixed" in one spot in the skies like many of the other celestrial objects

Answer 7

Over 4 hundered exoplantes have been found, yet to date, no single massive call has as many (or greater) huge-unfold planets than our very own solar does. <-- significant area of that sentence is, "to date," we in simple terms can no longer hit upon each little international on the distances in contact in extrosolar planet detection procedures.

Answer 8

well if they are studing something that other people dont study, most people the first thing they think of when they think of space is a star,. so it is a wondering star,.,

because only astronomers think of plan its