Abstract
Soon after the 1878 eclipse, German astronomer Theodor R. von Oppolzer reworked the chief historical records of possible bodies transiting the Sun: Fritsch (1800 and 1802), Stark (1819), Decuppis (1839), Sidebotham (1849), Ohrt (1857), Lescarbault (1859), and Lummis (1862). Oppolzer published an orbit radically different from any of those proposed by Le Verrier and predicted a transit would take place on March 18, 1879.1 C H. F. Peters, as usual, was skeptical and criticized the assumptions underlying Oppolzer’s calculations:
It is incomprehensible that he could claim that his elements satisfy the observations nearly perfectly.... Concerning the last mentioned observation, which Le Verrier had called, and Oppolzer also calls, “nearly certain,” ... it proves to be no more than two sunspots, which were observed by me and by Professer Spörer. It is little wonder that the Lescarbault data agrees with the calculations, since they provide the source of the values for the nodes and inclination.2
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Notes and References
Theodor von Oppolzer, “Sur l’existence de la planète intra-mercurielle indiquée par Le Verrier,” Comptes Rendu 88, 26–27 (1879) and “Elemente des Vulkan,” Astronomische Nachrichten 94 cols. 97–100 (1879).
C. H. F. Peters, “Schreiben des Herrn Prof. C. H. F. Peters an den Herausgeber,” Astronomische Nachrichten 94 cols. 303–304 (1879).
Oppolzer, “Bemerkung zu dem Aufsatze: ‘Elemente des Vulkan,” Astronomische Nachrichten 94 cols. 303–304 (1879).
Clippings book, Mary Lea Shane Archives of the Lick Observatory.
Edgar Frisby, report on eclipse of January 11, 1880; in Washington Observations, 1876 Appendix III, 395–410.
Clippings book, Mary Lea Shane Archives of the Lick Observatory.
Peters to the Editor of the Utica Morning Herald, Feb. 8, 1880; clippings book, Mary Lea Shane Archives of the Lick Observatory.
James C. Watson, ‘The Problematical Vulcan,” letter to the editor of the Madison (Wisconsin) State Journal (February 18, 1880); clippings book, Mary Lea Shane Archives of the Lick Observatory.
Ibid.
Humboldt, in Cosmos 3, 72–73 (1851) and footnote, declares: “The question whether stars can be seen in daylight with the naked eye through the shafts of mines, and on very high mountains, has been with me a subject of inquiry since my early youth. I was aware that Aristotle had maintained that stars might occasionally be seen from caverns and cisterns, as through tubes. Pliny alludes to the same circumstance, and mentions the stars that have been most distinctly recognized during solar eclipses. The chimney-sweepers whom I have questioned agree tolerably well in the statement that ‘they have never seen stars by day, but that, when observed at night, through deep shafts, the sky appeared quite near, and the stars larger.’“ Aristotle’s reference appears where it is least expected in De Generat. Animal, V. i; “keenness of sight,” he says there, “is as much the power of seeing far, as of accurately distinguishing the differences presented by the objects viewed. These two properties are not met with in the same individuals. For he who holds his hand over his eyes, or looks through a tube, is not on that account more or less able to distinguish differences of color, although he will see objects at a greater distance. Hence it arises that persons in caverns or cisterns are occasionally enabled to see stars.”
This description follows that given by E. S. Holden in Vierteljahreschrift der Astronomischen Gesellschaft 18, 112–116 (1883).
C.A. Young to G. C. Comstock, August 22, 1887; University of Wisconsin Archives, George C. Comstock Papers.
Apparently his ill treatment of his wife did not begin after his death. According to C. A. Young, writing to G. C. Comstock, “his treatment of his wife was simply abominable. She was rather weak and querulous,.... Of course I do not expect or desire this estimate of his character to go into the narrative of his life. I give it only to forestall any extravagant laudations which would vitiate the picture entirely for any one who knew the subject a little intimately. There is no need to expose his faults; but they should not be replaced by virtues he did not possess.” Further on Watson’s character, Young remarked that “he was one of the most energetic and able men I ever knew... extremely self-confident (but not perhaps more so than his abilities justified) selfish and unscrupulous in advancing his own interests.” C. A. Young to G. C. Comstock, August 22, 1887; University of Wisconsin Archives, George C. Comstock Papers.
Comstock, James Craig Watson, p. 55. He was buried at Oakwood Cemetery, Ann Arbor. Watson’s asteroids and the dates of their discovery are as follows:
C. H. F. Peters to E. S. Holden, February 17, 1881; Mary Lea Shane Archives of the Lick Observatory.
E. S. Holden, “Report of the Director of the Observatory and Professor of Astronomy to the Board of Regents,” Annual Report of the Regents of the University of Wisconsin 36 (1882).
According to the recollections of Albert Whitford, who worked under Joel Stebbins at the Washburn Observatory from 1931 until Whitford left, on leave to work on radar in the Radiation Laboratory at MIT in 1940.
It was located on the south slope of Observatory Hill, just east of Agricultural Hall. During a visit to Washburn Observatory in June 1996, Sheehan found nothing left of it; the place where it stood is now occupied by an asphalt-covered playground for the University of Wisconsin’s Laboratory School for kindergarten children.
Lewis Swift to E. E. Barnard, dated “Rochester Declaration Day,” 1882; Vanderbilt University archives. Without further positional data, no orbit could be calculated, and the comet has never received an official designation.
Swift to Barnard, February 10, 1883; Vanderbilt University archives.
Lewis Swift, “The Intra-Mercurial Planet Question Not Settled,” Sidereal Messenger 3, 242–244 (1883–84).
E. S. Holden, “Report on the Eclipse of May 6, 1883,” Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences 2, 100–102 (1884).
Fontenrose, “In Search of Vulcan,” 153.
Isaac H. Hall, Memorial Address, 27. Peters remained active to the very last and had discovered his 48th—and last—new asteroid, 287 Nephthys, in 1889, when he was 76 years old.
Lewis Swift, “The Intra-Mercurial Planet Question.” Following the 1883 eclipse he wrote (p. 242): “Scientific journals both in this country and in Europe appear to entertain the idea that because no intra-Mercurial planet during the last total eclipse was seen, none therefore exists.... As well might I assert that there was no comet where Brooks discovered that of 1812, because on three different occasions only a few days previously, I searched thoroughly over the region and found none.” After recalling his own observations of the two objects at the eclipse of 1878 and Trouvelot’s ruddy suspicious object, he added (p. 244): “My faith in their existence was never stronger than today.”
Richard A. Proctor, Old and New Astronomy (London: Longmans & Green, 1892), 427. Proctor, however, had died in 1888.
Simon Newcomb, “Discussion and Results of Observations on Transits of Mercury from 1677 to 1881,” Astronomical Papers of the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac 1, 367–487 (1882).
Newcomb, “The Elements of the Four Inner Planets and the Fundamental Constants of Astronomy,” Supplement to the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac 1897 (Washington, DC., 1895).
Hanson, 374.
A. Hall, “A Suggestion in the Theory of Mercury,” Astronomical Journal 14, 49–51 (1894).
Hanson, 376–377.
Lewis Swift, “Intra-Mercurial Planets,” English Mechanic and World of Science xlix, 135 (September 25, 1896).
Lewis Swift to E. E. Barnard, February 27, 1882; Vanderbilt University archives.
Swift, “Intra-Mercurial Planets.”
Ibid.
“Observation d’une étoile d’un éclat comparable à celui de Régulus et située dans la même constellation,” Comptes Rendu 112, 152–153 (1891).
Ibid., p. 260, C. note by Flammarion.
“FRAS,” English Mechanic and World of Science xliv, 182–183:182 (October 9, 1896).
P. L. Brown, Cornets, Meteorites and Men (London: Robert Hale & Co., 1973), p. 118.
L. Swift, “Note by Dr. L. Swift,” Astronomical Journal 17, 8 (1896).
L. Swift, “Were They Comets?” English Mechanic and World of Science 58, 161:36 (1898).
“Total Solar Eclipse of 1898, Jan. 22. Preliminary Reports on the British Government Expeditions,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (Appendix) 58, 1–61:36 (1898).
A. Hall, “Plus Probans Quam Necesse Est,” Popular Astronomy 7, 13 (1899).
W. F. Denning, “Search for an Intra-Mercurial Planet,” Knowledge 23, 134 (1900).
Described by Pickering’s brother, Edward C. Pickering, “A Photographic Search for an Intramercurial Planet,” Harvard Circular 48 (February 13, 1900); reprinted in Astrophysical Journal 11, 322–324 (1900).
C. G. Abbot, “A Preliminary Report of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Eclipse Expedition of May, 1900,” Report of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory 1891–1901, to the 57th Congress of the USA (Document #20, Exhibit D). 295–308: 308 (Washington D.C. 1902).
Perrine’s career and searches for Vulcan are well described in Donald E. Oster-brock, John R. Gustafson, and W. J. Shiloh Unruh, Eye on the Sky: Lick Observatory’s First Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 161–163.
W. W. Campbell, “The Closing of a Famous Astronomical Problem,” Popular Science Monthly 494–503:500 (1909).
A. Einstein, The Theory of Relativity (London, 1924), 103.
Steven Weinberg, Gravitation and Cosmology (New York: Wiley, 1972), p. 198, gives a value of 42″. 11 plus or minus 0″.45.
A. Einstein to P. Ehrenfest, January 17, 1916; quoted in Abraham Pais, “Subtle is the Lord..” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 253. For technical details of the various theories to account for the anomalous advance of the perihelion of Mercury, including the successive ideas of Einstein on the subject, the reader is referred to the masterly account of N. T. Roseveare, Mercury’s Perihelion from Le Verrier to Einstein (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982). Einstein’s theory has now, of course, been abundantly confirmed except in the case of the binary star DI Herculis.
That year, S. Chandrasekhar could claim that “the only crucial empirical evidence for the aesthetically most satisfying physical theory conceived by the mind of man—Einstein’s general theory of relativity—[was] the astronomical one derived from the motion of Mercury.” S. Chandrasekhar, “The Case for Astronomy,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 108, 1 (1964).
See R. A. Hulse and J. H. Taylor, “Discovery of a Pulsar in a Binary System,” Astrophysical Journal 195, L51–L53 (January 15, 1975). For this work Hulse and Taylor were awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize for Physics. The observations of this strange binary system over a period of twenty years have now provided a remarkably stringent test of General Theory which has proven correct to within one part in 1014.
Curtis, “James Craig Watson.”
Ibid.
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© 1997 Richard Baum and William Sheehan
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Baum, R., Sheehan, W. (1997). Legend into History. In: In Search of Planet Vulcan. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6100-6_17
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