Percival? Cronos?

The inhabitants of Earth learned last week that there is another planet, beside the eight they knew about, revolving around the Sun as the earth does. A few , of Earth's inhabitants had known the news for some time. The late Percival Lowell (1855-1916), rich traveler turned astronomer, elder brother of President Abbott Lawrence Lowell of Harvard University and of the late poetess Amy Lowell (1874-1925), in 1915 had predicted the existence of another member of the Planet System on its outer fringe.

The great gravities of the planets affect each other as they circle around the Sun and make their orbits slightly irregular. It was man's mathematical ability to measure such orbital variations that permitted Astronomer Lowell to declare that an unknown planet was butting Neptune's orbit out of its regularly irregular shape and to predict just where in the heavens a sufficiently powerful telescope, which did not exist during his life, would reveal it.

For many years the astronomers at the Lowell Observatory, which Percival Lowell built with his own money at clear-aired Flagstaff, Ariz., have been pointing their telescopes to the path in the skies where he had said his planet would be moving. The night of last Jan. 21, Clyde W. Tombaugh, 24, an assistant at the observatory, saw a strange blotch of light on a new plate. He hastily took the photograph to Vesto Melvin Slipher, director of the observatory. Dr. Slipher joyfully notified his younger brother, Earl Carl Slipher, and the rest of the staff, including Carl Otto Lampland. They were quite excited. Here visibly was Percival Lowell's proof. Night after night they rephotographed the planet. Pictures showed that it moved slightly in the same direction as the other planets. This was additional proof. They might have shouted out their find at once. But they deliberately saved the news until March 13. That date had a double significance in astronomy. On March 13, 1781, Frederick William Herschel (1738-1822) had, while sweeping the skies with a telescope, seen Uranus, first planet recognized in modern times.* And on March 13, 1855, Percival Lowell was born.

Astronomer Lowell's calculation of the planet's existence was gloriously praiseworthy for human mentality. But it was not unique. Neptune was discovered Sept. 23, 1846, in precisely the same manner-- by figuring from the orbital variation of Uranus. Wholly independent of each other John Couch Adams, young Englishman, and Urbain Jean Joseph Leverrier, young Frenchman, did the mathematical work.

Little, of course, is yet known about the New Planet. Estimates indicate that its diameter is at least as large and perhaps two and one-half times that of the Earth, that it is 50 times farther from the Sun, that its year is 300 times that of the 'Earth's. It gets so little heat from the Sun that most substances of earth would be frozen solid or into thick jellies.

Naming the New Planet is a problem. When Herschel discovered Uranus he called it Georgium Siditis after King George III of England. Others suggested Herschel. Both names raised an academic row. The quarrel was resolved by choosing Uranus, the Greek personification of the Heavens, husband of Gaea (Earth), father of the Cyclops, Titans and Furies.

Neptune, god of the sea, was chosen after Dominique Francois Arago (1786-1853), a leading French astronomer of his time had tried to get it called Leverrier, after Urbain Jean Joseph Leverrier, who calculated its existence.

For the New Planet, Percival Lowell s wife, who still lives in Beacon Street. Boston, last week suggested Percival. She rejected Lowell as being fixed to too many notable institutions--the Lowell Observatory, the Lowell Institute, the City of Lowell, etc. etc. Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard Observatory, suggested Cronos, son of Uranus and father ot Zeus Astrologers recommended variously I sis, Vulcan, Lilith.* Choice lies with the Lowell Observatory men.

Choosing an astronomical symbol for the New Planet is also a problem. Signs of the anciently known planets are conventionalized pictures. Mercury's represents the Caduceus, or head with winged cap; Venus' a looking glass; the Earths its equator and a meridian; Mars', a shield and spear, or a warrior's head with helmet and plume; Jupiter's an eagle; Saturn's a scythe or sickle; Uranus' H for Herschel. with a planet suspended from the crossbar; Neptune's the trident. The first recommended sign for Neptune was a crossbarred L with a planet suspended for Leverrier. That sign might stand for the new planet as a recognition of Percival Lowell. Or Harvard's shield might be chosen.

The immensity of the solar system can be grasped by considering Augusta, Me., as the sun and Sacramento. Calif., 2,663 air miles away, as the New Planet. Earth would then circle through Portland, Me., Mercury through Wiscasset, Me Venus through Rockland, Me., Mars through Bar Harbor, Me., Jupiter through Bridgeport, Conn., Saturn through Annapolis, Md.; Uranus through Nashville, Tenn., Neptune through Oklahoma City.

Between Mars and Jupiter is a great swarm of their little brothers, the planetoids. About 1,000 planetoids have been seen 'with telescopes, although some, are less than 25 miles in diameter. All these planets and planetoids are children of the Sun.

According to the most generally accepted theory, aeons ago a star passed near the Sun and sucked great swirls of Sun matter into space. The Sun's force of gravity kept several great puffs and many a little one from diffusing into interstellar space, but was not strong enough to draw them back. They developed their own gravities and took to twirling in nearly circular orbits around the Sun.*They all turn around the Sun in the same direction; and they all, except Uranus and Neptune, and possibly the New Planet, turn on their own polar axis in the same direction. /-Uranus .and Neptune are retrograde. The map shows their approximately relative position as of March 24, as might be seen by an observer on the star nearest to the celestially pretty Solar System, North Star, about 240 million miles away.

The daily turning of most of the planets on their own axes is slightly wobbly, made so by the gravity of their satellites, or moons. Earth and Neptune each have one moon. Mars has two, Uranus four, Saturn and Jupiter each nine. All the moons, like their planets, are visible by reflected Sun light. They move around their planets in the same direction as the planets turn on their polar axes. Exceptions are Saturn's moon called Phoebe and one of Jupiter's. Jupiter may have, also, a second contrary moon.

*Visible to the naked eyes of ancients were Mercury Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Although Aristarchus of Samos in the 3rd century B.C. had theorized that the planets revolved about the Sun, not until Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) did the World cease believing that they together with the Sun and Moon, both of which were considered planets, turned around the Earth.

*Astrologers are professionally joyous over the New Planet's discovery. They blame all their fortune mistellings on its obscurity, now talk of greater accuracy.

*Another theory holds that the Sun exploded the passing star, whose bits became the planets and planetoids.

/-The generally accepted view. However Mercury and Venus may also be retrograde.

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