NEWLY-FOUND PLANET.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 281, 26 November 1932, Page 6 (Supplement)

NEWLY-FOUND PLANET.

ONLY 3 MILES IN DIAMETER.

POSSIBLY AN IMMENSE METEORITE

A tiny planet, which has a year of 20 months and is, with the of the moon, the heavenly body nearest to the earth, is being "hunted through space" by the astronomers at the Union Observatory at Capetown.

This planet, scarcely three miles in diameter, is so new to astronomers that it has not even a permanent name. It is known at present as "Koinmuth's Planet, 1932," after Dr. Eoinmuth, of Heidelberg University.

When it first appeared as a dull blue on a photographic plate it was thought to be a remote comet, but since then it has been found to be a new planet, an independent member of the solar system. Its orbit passes within that of earth, and. it is the only heavenly body known to exist between this planet and Venus. When it reaches its nearest- point to the earth in November, 1940, it will only be 2,000,000 miles away, a little more than one-fiftieth of the distance to the sun. . ,

New photographs of Dr. Roinmuth's discovery have -now been taken at Johannesburg. It moves more slowly than the earth and takes 798 earth days to go around the sun. - Dr. Van Ben Bos, of the Union Observatory, says, "It is quite possible that it is not even a regular shape, such as is usually associated with planets. This was found to be the case recently with another minor body, Eros, and I should not be surprised if Roinmuth's planet is no globe, hut a great irregular piece of rock or metal, a meteorite on an immense scale, tracing-its own course through space."