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From: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: net.astro
Subject: Pluto predicted?
Message-ID: <1032@lsuc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 14-Jan-86 03:01:18 EST
Article-I.D.: lsuc.1032
Posted: Tue Jan 14 03:01:18 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 14-Jan-86 04:50:28 EST
References: <1017@lsuc.UUCP> <4143GMS@PSUVM> <126@idacrd.UUCP>
Reply-To: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
Lines: 27
Summary: No credit for Lowell OR Pickering

Matthew P Wiener (wiener@idacrd.UUCP) writes:

> Actually, some astronomers have made predictions since c.1910 about
> trans-Neptunian/Plutonian objects based on comet studies.  Indeed,
> one other astronomer (whose name escapes me) deserves equal credit
> with P Lowell for the prediction of Pluto.  (Perhaps because he also
> predicted several other planets, and could not afford his own ob-
> servatory, and at first dismissed Pluto as just a comet, he has been
> lost in obscurity.)  

I presume you're thinking of William H. Pickering.  I'll agree that
Pickering and Lowell deserve equal credit for predicting the planet
Pluto ... ZERO credit.

In 1978 the mass of Pluto was established to be ~1/400 that of Earth.
This is MUCH too small to have caused any of the perturbations that
Lowell or Pickering thought they used to predict it.  Lowell gets credit
for starting his observatory, and both Pickering and Lowell did predict
planets, but any relationship between the predictions and Pluto was
apparently sheer coincidence.

Credit for Pluto goes to Clyde W. Tombaugh and his superiors at the
Lowell Observatory: V.M. Slipher, C.O. Lampland, and E.C. Slipher.

Mark Brader
		"I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pedantic and that's just as good."
						-- D Gary Grady, net.followup