THE NEW PLANET.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 66, 19 March 1930, Page 6

THE NEW PLANET.

/ A new planet has just been discovered, larger than the earth, and thirty times as far distant from the' sun. It is to bo hoped that this is a permanent planet, for such bodies have been discovered before now and proved to have only a phantom existence. The French astronomer Leverrier (who, though not , actual discoverer of the' planet , Neptune,, had demonstrated its probable existence) also predicted the _ existence, .* of an intraMercurial planet as the only method of accounting for certain irregularities in the motion of Mercury. Later, in 1859, Lescarbault observed the passage across the sun of a small black disc, supposed to be a new planet, and Leverrier, on discovering the observations, deduced a period of twenty days for the revolution of the new orb, and fixed a date for its future transits. To this newly-discovered body the name of Vulcan was given, in accordance with the habit of bestowing the names of Roman divinities on the planets of our Bystem. The transits predicted by Leverrier, however, failed to. take place, and Lescarbault's observation is now admitted to have been illusory. Nevertheless, the American astronomers Watson and Swift claimed to have observed Vulcan during the total eclipse of July 29, 1878. It is now generally recognised, however, by astronomers that the phantom planet of Vulcan has no existence. Astronomers are not infallible; many of them even doubt the existence of the "canals" on Mars, which have given rise to so much discussion. Is the newly-discovered planet now announced simply another phantom ? We have to-day much improved methods of observing the heavenly bodies, and the new 200-inch telescope now in process of manufacture for a Californian observatory is expected to clear up many astronomical mysteries and to render visible-thousands of stars which cannot now be seen by any instruments at our disposal.

As a matter. of fact, the number of planets which, revolve round the sun is more than nine (including the new discovery); there are more than a thousand of them, if we include the minor planets, sometimes called planetoids or asteroids, which circulate between Mars and Jupiter. The first and largest of the asteroids (Ceres) was discovered on the evening of the first day of the nineteenth century. Ceres has a diameter of less than five hundred miles; some of them have a diameter of less than twenty, and every year new asteroids are being discovered. . These small bodies arc all invisible to the naked eye, though they can be photographed, leaving a trail instead of a dot on a photographic plate long exposed. It is a significant fact that the interlacing ellipses of these planetoid orbits are most crowded near the place where, by Bode's law .of periodicity, a missing planet should have revolved. As the year of each planet (the period in which it revolves around the sun) is proportionate to its distance from that orb, and as the furthest planet hitherto discovered (Neptune) revolves round the sun in about 165 years, it follows that the year of the newly-discovered planet must amount to several centuries at least of our time. —J. D. LECKIE.