The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-10-14
A REMARKABLE NEW PLANET.
One Of The Asteroids That Has A
 Peculiar Orbit.

One Of The Asteroids That Has A Peculiar Orbit.
 Of all the different departments of astronomical work minor planet dis covery has seemed by far the least in- teresting and profitable. There seemed no end to their numbers more than one hundred and fifty having been detected within the last ten years; they are too small for any markings to be observed on their surfaces or to afford fields for delightful speculations as to their cli- mates and inhabitants: they are just wandering powders, as numerous as the pebbles on the seashore, and with for the most part scarcely more indiv- duality to repay the astronomer for the toll of keeping a watch on their motions and of computing their orbits, so that it was with a decided feeling of satis- faction that most astronomers saw the first half of the present year go by without a single fresh discovery.
 The last two months, however have each brought a new capture; the first, discovered by M. Charlois, of the Nice Observatory, on July Is, having no SPSCldl Cldllll5 lO dllcullOIl, DuL luS ScC- ond, discovered by Herr Witt, of the Urania Observatory, Berlin. on August A. seems to have so remarkable an or bit that astronomers will think the la bor spent on the discovery and obser- vation of the other four hundred and thirty or so of these little bodies well bestowed, since 1t has led to the discov- cry of this one.
 The chief interest of minor planet" astronomy has lain in the suitability of some of them for us in the determin- ation of the Fundamental unit of astronomy, the distance of the earth from the sun. Some of them come sufficiently near the earth every now and then for their distance to be de- termined with considerable precision. And as the relative distances of the various planets can easily be ascer- tained, to know the distance accurately of one is to know the distance of all
 But the minor planets" as a body lie between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, and only one or two ever come nearer to the sun than the mean dis tance from the sun within that of Mars, and, travelling in very eccentric orbit, will approach the earth when it is at it's nearest approach to both earth and sun at the same time within four teen millions of miles. It will be at such times our nearest neighbor in space after the moon herself, but such close oppositions will only occur about once in thirty years. The time of re- volution of the new planet Is 645 days.
 Like the other pocket planets,' it is of very small size, say twenty to twenty-five miles in diameter but on the occasion of a very close opposition it will shine as a sixth magnitude star and therefore be visible to the naked eye. Even at it's most distant opposi- tions it will be of the eleventh magni- tude, five or six times as bright, that is, as most of the more recently dis covered minor planets. This fact makes it most remarkable that it has not been discovered earlier. and creates the hope that other bodies nearer than Mars may be detected. At any rate, it will revive the interest in the search for small celestial wanderers, of which it is at present by far the most useful and in eresting.-London Times