Marveling at the way we reach for the stars

In a move that seems right, Sobel doesn't shy away from using religious or mythological language to describe the origins of the solar system. From the birth of the universe's first stars, one of which became our sun, she uses the book of Genesis to capture the awesomeness of the moment. Sobel continually uses the word ''Creation," and even asks unapologetically if the splendor of a solar eclipse seen from Earth is not ''part of a divine design." But this book isn't subterfuge from an intelligent design proponent. Sobel, who also wrote ''Galileo's Daughter," is one of the few science writers who recall a time when religious language was not literal, but metaphorical, a language of wonder.

Scientific explanations can be filled with their own sense of grandeur if you have the literary ability. What might in another context be dry astrophysics is for Sobel an opportunity for poetry. Mercury, for example, not much more than a smallish molten rock, is transformed into a living world: ''Day breaks over Mercury in a white heat. . . . The nearby Sun lurches into the black sky and looms enormous there, nearly triple the diameter of the familiar orb we see from Earth." Each planet gets this treatment. But Sobel finds a unique place to start for each.

The most compelling aspect of these brief essays is the lengthy discussions of the cultural impact of each planet, including forays into astrology and stories of the gods. Brief biographies of astronomers and explorers give the book a human element. Sometimes the minutiae of each planet's distance from the sun or its geological makeup create a kind of dulling repetition, but Sobel always provides fascinating anecdotes about the obsessive personalities that discovered these details.