Rough Ways Made Smooth. Richard Anthony Proctor
of the observers, it is certain—that within the orbit of Mercury there are several small planets, of which certainly two, and probably three, were seen during the eclipse of July 29, 1878. All these bodies must be beyond the range of any except the most powerful telescopes, whether sought for as bright bodies outside the sun (not eclipsed) or as dark bodies in transit across the sun's face. The search for such bodies in transit would in fact be hopeless with any telescope which would not easily separate double stars one second of arc apart. It is with large telescopes, then, and under favourable conditions of atmosphere, locality, and so forth, that the search for intra-Mercurial planets in transit must in future be conducted. As the observed disturbance of Mercury's perihelion, and the absence of any corresponding disturbance of his nodes (the points where he crosses the plane of the earth's motion) show that the disturbing bodies must form a ring or disc whose central plane must nearly coincide with the plane of Mercury's path, the most favourable time for seeing these bodies in transit would be the first fortnights in May and November; for the earth crosses the plane of Mercury's orbit on or about May 8 and November 10. I believe that a search carried out in April, May, and June, and in October, November, and December, with the express object of discovering very small planets in transit, could not fail to be quickly rewarded—unless the observations made by Watson and Swift are to be wholly rejected.
[Since this was written, Professor Swift has expressed the opinion that his planet cannot possibly have been the one seen near Theta Cancri by Professor Watson—who it seems saw Theta in the centre of a large field of view, and must therefore have seen Swift's planet had that object been placed either as shown in fig. 2 or fig. 3. Hence Professor Swift considers that both the stars he himself saw were planets, and that he did not see Theta at all. The reasoning in the last five paragraphs of the above essay would not be in the least affected if we adopted Professor Swift's conclusion, that four and not three intra-Mercurial planets were detected during the eclipse of July last. Yet later Professor Peters of Clinton has indicated reasons for believing that while Watson simply mistook for planets the two fixed stars, Theta and Zeta Cancri, Professor Swift saw no planets at all. This interpretation would account fully, though not very satisfactorily, for all that is mysterious in the two narratives.]
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