Excerpt:
From our small world we have gazed upon the cosmic ocean for untold thousands of years. Ancient astronomers observed points of light that appeared to move among the stars. They called these objects planets, meaning wanderers, and named them after Roman deities -- Jupiter, king of the gods; Mars, the god of war; Mercury, messenger of the gods; Venus, the god of love and beauty, and Saturn, father of Jupiter and god of agriculture. The stargazers also observed comets with sparkling tails, and meteors or shooting stars apparently falling from the sky.
Annotation:
This site is part of a large Views of the Solar System project. The project presents information about all kinds of objects in space such as planets, asteroids, meteors, and comets. The history section offers a chronology, descriptions of spacecraft and missions, and an alphabetical list of scientists from various periods throughout history. The list of scientists only includes short, one-sentence descriptions of their contributions, but there are links to longer articles that explain discoveries in greater detail.