When you look up into the sky on a dark night can you tell a star from a planet? Even the first astronomers noticed there was a difference. They called the planets that they could see moving about the sky the wanderers. These included Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. They thought the stars looked as though they were assigned places in a sky that moved and they noted how they seemed to twinkle. To them the planets must have looked like colored dots that appeared and disappeared almost magically. For many years, they thought Venus was two planets, one that appeared in the morning sky while the other appeared at twilight. It's no wonder they named them after their gods. Some of the names were Roman, some were Greek, and many of them had more than one name. As their moons were discovered, most astronomers started naming them after the children of these gods. When the moons of Uranus were found, they named them after characters in famous books. As they keep finding more and more moons astronomers have started giving them numbers instead of names. If you are wondering how they are finding so many new moons, it's because modern astronomers are continually taking pictures of the sky. When they compare these pictures they are able to see when something new is circling a planet. What would you name a moon if you discovered it?