DISCOVERY OF PLANET.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20520, 22 March 1930, Page 11

DISCOVERY OF PLANET.

SUGGESTION OF MISTAKE.

DOUBTS OF ASTRONOMER.

CONFIRMATION REPORTED.

DATA NOT YET PUBLISHED.

By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (Received March 21. 8.35 p.m.) ' NEW YORK, March 20. The New' York Times sent its London correspondent to Oxford, where at the Radcliffe Observatory he interviewed Dr. J. Jackson, chief assistant of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, who immediately after the announcement of the discovery o? a new planet wrote an article for the London Times, commending the Lowell Observatory.

Dr. Jackson, however, stated that after careful consideration he now believed that the astronomers at the Lowell Observatory probably mistook a minor planet, of which a large number are always seen, for a major body. He based his doubts upon the failure of the Lowell Observatory to indicate the position of the planet, and the giving to the world of scarcely any details beyond the bare announcement, and the fact that the planet was not found in the position which Professor Lowell had predicted. The New • York Times spoke to Professor Harlow Shapley, of Harvard University Observatory, over the telephone this evening, who said: " There can be no I doubt that tho discovery announced from the Lowell Observatory is a fact. We have received confirmatory observations from the Yerkes Observatory,

" The planet on the international magnitude standard is 16. Professor Lowell never claimed that his prediction would be more than an approximation. There has been no haste in the publication of data from the Lowell Observatory on the planet. That will come later."

The minor planets, also known as asteroids or planetoids, form a group of small, planetary bodies, of which all the known members but three move between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Before this group was known the apparent vacancy in the region occupied by it led to the belief that a planet would be found there. In January, 1801, , Guiseppe Piazzi, of Palermo, found a planet there, which was named Ceres. In March, 1802, H. W. Olbers discovered a second planet, named Pallas. Olbers formed the, theory that these bodies were fragments of a larger planet which had been shattered by an internal convulsion. Within two years two other planets were found. Then in 1845 a fifth, Astrea, and in 1847 a sixth, was found, and in recent, years many hundreds have been discovered, generally by photography. They are all very small.