Talk:Discovery of Neptune

message: Whatever the position on NPOV (which I think is not as extreme as has 
been suggested), may I recommend two additional reference sources.
1:  There is an excellent, also non-sensational, summary history 
(in French) written in 1946 by Prof A Danjon, himself a notable 
astronomer and inventor who was then director of the Paris Observatory 
("Le centenaire de la découverte de Neptune", Danjon, A., 
in 'Ciel et Terre' (1946), Vol. 62, p. 369). 
The full paper is downloadable (pdf or gif pages) 
at   http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1946C%26T....62..369D
It seems to me that Danjon's account succeeds in combining accessibility 
with mathematical truth and proportionality.  He gives interesting data 
(and some quotes from LeVerrier which I haven't seen elsewhere), and 
includes a summary of the parallel work of Adams. 
Danjon's information gives a useful technical perspective to some points 
in the existing article page. 
For example, it's useful to cross-refer to Danjon in regard to the claim 
currently on the page that both calculators had "greatly overestimated the 
planet's actual distance from the sun. Further, they both succeeded in 
getting the longitude almost right only because of a 'fluke of orbital timing'."
Danjon attributes this particular criticism to the US astronomer Peirce and 
shows that it was not very well taken.  Danjon gives a diagram showing that 
while hypothetical orbits calculated by both LeVerrier and Adams for the 
new planet were very different on the whole from that of the real Neptune 
(and actually similar to each other), they were both much closer to the real 
Neptune, over the crucial segment of orbit covering the interval of years 
for which the observations and calculations were made, than for the rest of 
the calculated orbits.  So the fact that both the calculators used a much 
larger orbital major axis than the reality, this was not so important, and 
not the most relevant parameter, because, so the figure illustrates, there 
were temporarily compensating errors made by both Leverrier and Adams in the 
orbital eccentricity and direction of perihelion.  (This is quite a common 
type of occurrence with early attempts to calculate orbits 
for other bodies for which data are available only over a short arc.)
2: Adams' paper of November 1846 read to the Royal Astronomical 
Society is also available in full on the internet.  It gives many 
mathematical details, but it is especially notable here for Adams' 
specific acknowledgement of LeVerrier's credit for the discovery 
(para 5 of the paper) :-
"I mention these dates merely to show that my results were arrived at 
independently, and previously to the publication of those of M.Le Verrier, 
and not with the intention of interfering with his just claims to the honours 
of the discovery ;  for there is no doubt that his researches were first 
published to the world, and led to the actual discovery of the planet 
by Dr. Galle, so that the facts stated above cannot detract, in the 
slightest degree, from the credit due to M. Le Verrier."
Download is available at --
http://www.archive.org/details/appendicestovari00grearich (NB that this 
is a 50Mb pdf download, because it's a photoscan of a large 1851 book, 
a collection of astronomical reprints published by the Nautical Almanac 
Office, of which the Adams paper is only one.)
In this connection it is worth mentioning that Danjon's account points out
that LeVerrier and Adams both stood back from the quarrelsome aspects of the 
controversy, they met each other the following year and developed good relations.
Terry0051 (talk) 11:19, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Additional sources/references

message: Credit isn't simply coming up with an idea; you have to get it first to 'market.' Since the Galle-Le Verrier team was first (after all...you DID put this on Sept 23 1846...what date was Adams GOING to discover the planet Neptune, had it not already been discovered?), I question the current wording as politically-correct muckery.Ryoung122 05:59, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I may be biased, but to me the whole pother smacks of farce. Galle acted on Le Verrier's calculations, which had been PUBLISHED, while Adams alleged predictions were not. If their roles were inverted, Le Verrier would barely get a footnote, and a sneering one at that. L'omo del batocio (talk) 16:42, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

text: "Airy wrote to Leverrier on the 14th of October congratulating him, ‘You are to recognized beyond doubt as the real predictor of the planet’s place,’ then added a week later on the 21st:‘no person in England will dispute the completeness of your investigations, the sagacity of your remarks on the points it was important to observe, and the fairness of your moral convictions as to the accuracy and certainty of the results. With these things we have nothing which we can put in competition. My acknowledgement of this will never be wanting; nor, I am confident, will that of any other Englishman who really knows the history of the matter.’". Yeah, sure. Then he changed his mind. I got the above from this English academic site, where the story is told with ample quotes from the original documents. L'omo del batocio (talk) 17:13, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

text: A compliment worthy of the Bard himself. 50.64.119.38 (talk) 14:07, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: What date was Adams GOING to discover Neptune on?

message: I am the person guilty of writing most of this article so I thought that I would try to defend by reputation. I originally got involved because I wanted to write the William Grylls Adams article, being interested in 19th century technical education. I found the John Couch Adams article with a POV template and comments that it seemed to give too much priority to Adams. I carefully worked through the article verifying all statements from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. I then went carefully through the Sheehan, W. et al. (2004) Scientific American article and then the Kollerstrom website carefully interpolating those views and adding references. I would say that the ODNB is by far the most reliable source of those three. Of course, this was all from the viewpoint of the Adams article.
Of course, this upset the balance of the Adams article. It's not his most important claim to fame. I broke it out into a separate article "summary style" and added links to articles of the other main players. I have, despite your comments, worked very hard to make this NPOV and verifiable. I am painfully aware that there is more detail here about Adams than anyone else. That is because of the article's origins, my limited time to spend on mining Sheehan and Kollerstrom, and the fact that my sources are principally English. If the story reads like a film script then I would submit that that is because of the inherent excitement of the story rather than editorial colourisation. To defend again my bona fides, I started the Heinrich Louis d'Arrest article and, I think, all Wikipedia references to his pivotal role were contributed by me.
I'm sorry that my editing has not met your high standards and look forward to your improvement of the article.Cutler 21:51, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have amended and edited the article to remove some of the NPOV bias in favor of Adams, though it still could use more work. I have also added a graph of my own making showing the positions of Neptune on the day of discovery according to the various hypotheses. (I got the data from Rawlins 1992, which is now listed in the bibliography.)
--Keithpickering (talk) 08:10, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Good work! - diagram is especially useful.Cutler (talk) 09:11, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  An apology and a defence 

message: William Lassell, a brewer from Liverpool, seems to have suffered from a series of
disasters, ranging from a lost letter to an injured ankle. They prevented his finding Neptune
at that time, it is said.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.143.97.30 (talk) 15:09, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lassell 

message: The planet Neptune has a magnitude that ranges from 7.78 to 8.00 and should be visible in a small telescope.
The question arises as to why Adams did not try a personal search for Neptune.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.4.21 (talk) 10:20, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Personal search 

message: Galle's telescope had a diameter of 9 inches, that of
Challis, 11.25 inches, and that of Lassell, 24 inches.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.4.21 (talk) 10:01, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Diameters 

message: Bessel and Fleming took some part in the discovery of Neptune.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.145.11.103 (talk) 12:30, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Four more 

message: In the main article, "only seven planets" should be "only seven major planets".
Five minor planets were known in 1846.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.44.111.24 (talk) 15:09, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Seven 

message: In the main article, it is said that "Challis lacked an up-to-date star-map".
Neptune should have shown a disc in his telescope. I think Challis actually
said in his notes, "It seems to have a disc." In addition, Challis could see Neptune move,
if he saw it more than once. It has an apparent diameter of 2.2 to 2.4 seconds
of arc, when seen from the Earth.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.44.108.15 (talk) 12:37, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Challis 

message: About six other observations of Neptune are not mentioned in the article. They were made by
Lalande and others, who mistook it for a star. See the MacTutor article.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.41.51.240 (talk) 11:36, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not 

message: Galileo, writing in Latin, said about the two apparent stars, "sed videbat remotiores inter se".
Thus he treated the motion of Neptune as possible, not certain. See the MacTutor article,
mentioned in the paragraph entitled "Not", above.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.139.116.24 (talk) 15:43, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible motion 

message: The 'Galileo's "near miss"' section begins with the words: "On January 28, 1613, using the same telescope". Same telescope as what? It goes on to say, "not only did Galileo record Neptune, but he was also the first person to detect its motion", but later seems to contradict this with the statement, "Neptune's motion was far too slight to be detected with Galileo's small telescope". I don't know enough about the subject, but perhaps somebody could sort out the confusion. Or am I missing something(s)?  Davidelit (Talk)  04:24, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I took a stab at rewriting this section. Feel free to improve on it. Aldebaran66 (talk) 06:43, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Confusing wording

message: : ... George Airy announced that Adams had also predicted the discovery of the planet.
I'm not in love with the three bold words, recently added.  I can see why the editor was unhappy about "prediction" of something that had been there for eons; on another hand, "predicted the discovery" suggests to me that Adams predicted when or how or by whom Neptune would be seen.  Is there a better word than "predicted"? —Tamfang (talk) 04:36, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Predicted (the discovery of) the planet 

message: There is currently almost no information on how Le Verrier discovered the planet, instead that section of the article focuses entirely on Adams. Because it was Le Verrier's data that was actually used to discover the planet I feel that his methodology and research should have priority in the article while of course not omitting any of the other independent discoverers. I do not feel knowledgeable enough on the subject to make the edit myself. Viciouspiggy (talk) 15:43, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV tag October 2012 regarding the pro-Adams POV 

message: The current text includes the following remarkable claim
:"In 1781, Anders Johan Lexell was the first to compute the orbit of Uranus and notice that it had irregularities. He suggested that there might be other planets in the Solar System that perturb the orbit of Uranus, with the Solar System ranging as far as 100 AU."
However, the cited article, online here and reprinted here, makes no such claim. Unless someone objects or produces a reliable source I will delete this within the next few days. AstroLynx (talk) 16:26, 26 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: As nobody objected, I have deleted the unsourced claim. AstroLynx (talk) 08:40, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Predicted by Lexell? 

message: this is disturbing and disappointing. even the :File:Neptune discovery.png doesn't explain where the planet should have been according to newton's law. the link in the further reading section to Barbara J. Becker lecture do provide some hints but i'm not satisfied − Fleeting compliance (talk) 19:58, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  No math at all? 

message: So, I just read a book (Under Alien Skies: A Sightseer's Guide to the Universe, by Phil Plait; the only redlink on his page) that seems to say that Neptune's mass was underestimated and there was nothing pulling on Uranus besides Neptune. -Links to my Profily, chat discussion, and editing history! This message was sent by TenGolfPedia at 02:12, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wasn't there that...