NEW PLANET DOUBTED

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 928, 22 March 1930, Page 9

NEW PLANET DOUBTED

LONDON SCIENTIST HINTS AT MISTAKE DISCOVERERS HAVE PROOF NEW YORK, Thursday. 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 of 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 doubt that the discovery announced from the Lcwell Observatory is a fact. We have received confirmatory observations from 1 the Yerlces Observatory.”