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Astronaut, v. 1, issue 1, September 1947

Page 5

BETWEEN THE ORBITS of Mars and Jupiter -- with a few minor exceptions -- are found the asteroids, or planetoids, as they should be properly called. These small bodies, or fragments of bodies, circlet sun as do their larger relatives.

More than fifteen hundred of them have been discovered since 1801, when Piazzi, mapping the stars in the constellation Taurus, noted a light which seemed to move, and proceed to announce the discovery of a comet. Gauss, to whom Piazzi entrusted the development of his discovery because of his own illness, determined that the new body was really of planetary nature.

Here was a startling confirmation of the reality of the Tit-us-Bode Law of Planetary Distances, which had indicated that there should be a planet situated at almost exactly the distance where Ceres, as the new body was named, had been discovered.  It also vindicated the judgement of Johannes Kelpler, who had noticed, two hundred years before, that Mars and Jupiter were much further apart than mathematical harmony demanded, and who wrote in his "Mysterium Cosmographicum" the sentence: "Between Jupiter and Mars there should be a planet."

But hardly had the nature of Ceres been discovered when second planetoid, Pallas, was discovered by Olbers. This created difficulties, for only one body was supposed to be located at that distance. As Lowell says, however, "the inventive genius of Olbers came to the rescue," and the German astronomer hypothesized that these two bodies were parts of a single planet which had exploded, and that other portions might be found by watching the two points where the orbits of Ceres and Pallas came nearest to intersecting, in the constellations of Virgo and Cetus.

Olbers believed that the destructive planetary explosion had occurred in one of these signs, and that the various parts must all in time return to the place of the cataclysm, unless perturbed by the other planets. His hypothesis seemed to be correct when, as no others were discovered for almost forty years, the theory was accepted at its face value.

In 1845 Hencke, an ex-postmaster of Dreissen, located the fifth planetoid, which like all of those detected since then, was so small as to have escaped notice except by the most detailed search. And since that the time these minute bodies have been located virtually by dozens every year.

When the planetoids began turning up in ever increasing numbers, some astronomers reversed their theory. The fragments were not portions of a vanished planet, they decided. Instead, these eccentric chunks of rock were the material from which a planet

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BETWEEN THE ORBITS of Mars and Jupiter -- with a few minor exceptions -- are found the asteroids, or planetoids, as they should be properly called. These small bodies, or fragments of bodies, circlet sun as do their larger relatives. More than fifteen hundred of them have been discovered since 1801, when Piazzi, mapping the stars in the constellation Taurus, noted a light which seemed to move, and proceed to announce the discovery of a comet. Gauss, to whom Piazzi entrusted the development of his discovery because of his own illness, determined that the new body was really of planetary nature. Here was a startling confirmation of the reality of the Tit-us-Bode Law of Planetary Distances, which had indicated that there should be a planet situated at almost exactly the distance where Ceres, as the new body was named, had been discovered. It also vindicated the judgement of Johannes Kelpler, who had noticed, two hundred years before, that Mars and Jupiter were much further apart than mathematical harmony demanded, and who wrote in his "Mysterium Cosmographicum" the sentence: "Between Jupiter and Mars there should be a planet." But hardly had the nature of Ceres been discovered when second planetoid, Pallas, was discovered by Olbers. This created difficulties, for only one body was supposed to be located at that distance. As Lowell says, however, "the inventive genius of Olbers came to the rescue," and the German astronomer hypothesized that these two bodies were parts of a single planet which had exploded, and that other portions might be found by watching the two points where the orbits of Ceres and Pallas came nearest to intersecting, in the constellations of Virgo and Cetus. Olbers believed that the destructive planetary explosion had occurred in one of these signs, and that the various parts must all in time return to the place of the cataclysm, unless perturbed by the other planets. His hypothesis seemed to be correct when, as no others were discovered for almost forty years, the theory was accepted at its face value. In 1845 Hencke, an ex-postmaster of Dreissen, located the fifth planetoid, which like all of those detected since then, was so small as to have escaped notice except by the most detailed search. And since that the time these minute bodies have been located virtually by dozens every year. When the planetoids began turning up in ever increasing numbers, some astronomers reversed their theory. The fragments were not portions of a vanished planet, they decided. Instead, these eccentric chunks of rock were the material from which a planet