WANDERING PLANETS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 398, 5 July 1928, Page 13

WANDERING PLANETS

IS SOME OTHER BODY INTERFERING? NEW MYSTERY OF THE SKY Following close upon the report that Nova Pictoris, the “new star” in a southern constellation, has split in halves, comes an account from New York of strange happenings to the planets Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. It seems that these three members of the outer circles of the solar system have recently been “planets” (“wanderers”) in a double sense. They have been wandering from their usual orbits. That is an observation which recalls the early Victorian romance of the heavens, when Adams, in Cambridge, and Leverrier, in France, almost simultaneously remarked unaccountable perturbations of the planets Uranus (Herschel) and Saturn, and ingeniously deduced the position of a then unknown member of the solar system. A Newcomer? With some regrettable delay at Greenwich the calculations of those two observers led to the discovery of the now well-known planet Neptune. Is there another member of the solar system to be discovered? Or are to-day’s perturbations du© to the inroad of some alien body into the sun-charmed circle of our planets? American astronomers are trying to discover the cause of the latest perturbations. Professor William H. Pickering, former Yale astronomer, has advanced the theory, that some new celestial body is responsible for these deviations in the outer orbits of Sol’s system. He thinks a stranger may have come up in the vicinity and rear of Neptune.

At the Yerkes Observatory (of Chicago University) Professor (Edwin B. Frost and Professor Frank Bass have taken photographs to further their investigations into conditions in the universe in the region of Neptune. Lick Observatory (of the University of California) is also trying to locate the mysterious stranger. Here Professor R. G. Aitken, associated director of Lick, says that Professor Pickering’s theory cannot be. overlooked. “Like some watcher of the skies, when a new planet swims into his ken,” any observer at the great astronomical centres may now well think that he is on the eve of great discoveries. Sir Frank Dyson, AstronomerRoyal, made the following comments when the report was brought to his notice: “The observed places of these planets are very slightly out from the predicted places. Professor George Forbes has suggested that there is a planet beyond Neptune causing these slight divergencies. Professor W. H. Pickering has made similar suggestions. One cannot say at present that these divergencies arise from an exterior planet and are not due to slight errors in the predicted places. I am not sure that predictions are absolutely perfect.” Qualified Support The Rev. T. E. R. Phillips, president of the Royal Astronomical Association, who is the rector of Headley (Surrey), gave qualified support to the theory of Professor Pickering. He recalled that it was only because Uranus was not moving in the expected orbit that Neptune was discovered in circumstances which still remain one of the most fascinating chapters of modern astronomy. “There are,” said Mr. Phillips, “certain very small outstanding discrepancies in the orbital records of Uranus and Neptune which might he due to some still more remote planet. “It may be that there Is an outside body still more remote than Neptune. “This possible extra-Neptunian planet would most .likely be found, noi from a study of the unexplained wan derings of Neptune, but in the movements of Uranus, because Neptune has only been explored over a comparatively small arc. “Neptune takes 165 years to go round the sun.”