Astronomy Domine (4:09)

A song about the heavens, listing some of our planets and some of their moons.

Syd came down from his vision convinced that he had encountered the full majesty of the universe and began to search for a way to express what he’d seen in his music. He often carried with him a small Times Astronomical Atlas, which included speculation from noted astronomers on the likely surface conditions of each of the planets in the solar system. Syd combined this information with allusions to astronaut Dan Dare, Pilot Of The Future (a popular strip from boys’ comic The Eagle) into a string of lyrics which would, a year later, become Astronomy Domine. — Jones, “Wish You Were Here”.

Syd was reading out of a Times Astronomical Atlas (cf. “Lost in the Woods” and other sources). the initial bit read by Jenner in the classic recording was probably from the same book. Syd was a big fan of collaging lyrics out of single books (the names mentioned in this case are a collage of planets and/or their moons — … there’s no logical sequence to them, though one could make a rather peculiar case that they represent some kind of journey through our solar system.

To wit, Jupiter and Saturn are in proper order, then three of Uranus’ moons (Oberon, Miranda and Titania — Cordelia, previously mentioned, is also such a satellite of Uranus), then Neptune, again in physical sequence, and, unless the lyric sheets are wrong and it should read “Triton” (moon of Neptune, possible!), the last, ‘Titan’, is a moon of *Saturn*, throwing a monkey-wrench into the otherwise smooth sequence of astronomical bodies.

— eArHeAd! (http://www.luckymojo.com/barrett/songstories.html#STORIESS)