The Night Sky! Look Heaven-word

       Vincent Lloyd's article in the April 2014 Griffith Observer gives us the roots of some  astronomical words.

       Let's begin with constellation.  Con or com as usual means, from Latin, "together," and stella provides the "stars"; what could be a better root meaning for "constellation" than "stars together"?

       Astronomy leads off with the Greek root for "star" aster and uses nomos for "law" to give us "astronomy," "law of the stars," again exceedingly appropriate.

       A third term that astronomy helps give us the "laws" for is planets.  Planetes is Greek and means "wanderer."  The ancient world saw the planets as stars that wandered around the sky, which indeed they do compared to the stars, so what could be a more perfect and suggestive name to distinguish them from stella and aster than planetes,                                                                     "wanderer"