Two New Objects

Astronomers generally agreed last week that two tiny objects recently discerned close to Earth are planetoids, the gleaming flecks of solar matter which revolve around the Sun mostly between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. One of the objects was discovered in March by Astronomer E. Delporte of Belgium's Royal Observatory,* the other in April by Dr. Karl Reinmuth of Heidelberg. They might have been planetoids, tailless comets, or, wonderfully, new moons of the Earth.

Cause for speculation and calculation arose from the celestially minute sizes of the Delporte and Reinmuth Objects (about three miles diameter) and from their unexpected locations. The Delporte Object was only ten million miles from Earth. The Sun is 92,897,400 mi. away. Venus (nearest planet) is 25 million miles at its nearest. The big, 20-mi.-in-diameter planetoid Eros approaches to 13,800,000 mi. Nothing planetary it seemed could come closer to Earth.

Yet little more than a month after Dr. Delporte found the Delporte Object only ten million miles away and while astronomers were calculating its nature, Dr. Reinmuth found his Object only eight million miles away. It may at times come within 4,350,000 mi. of Earth. Only heavenly things known to have ever approached closer were the regular PonsWinnecke comet (3,500,000 mi., June 27, 1927) and the vanished Lexell comet (1,500,000 mi. in 1770). Another point: the Reinmuth Object swung within the Earth's orbit. Only the Moon and an occasional comet head have been known to do that. The heavy Moon (2,160 mi. diameter), averaging 238,857 mi. from Earth, is gripped as a satellite. The 3-mi. Reinmuth Object four to eight million miles out might conceivably be held as a second moon within Earth's powerful gravitational system.*

When a new planetoid (or what may be a new planetoid) is discovered, the report is immediately sent to the Astronomisches Recheninstitut in Berlin, whence the news is broadcast to all observatories. When the nature of the new object is uncertain, Professor Armin Otto Leuschner of the University of California at Berkeley often is called upon. Professor Leuschner has developed short mathematical formulae to describe the courses of planetoids and comets. He matches the curves of the new orbits supplied him to the curves of his formulae. Last week he and other astronomers who had checked over his work were generally agreed that both Delporte's and Reinmuth's Objects were planetoids.

Significance of the discoveries and their determination was that they might help measure distances between Earth and other heavenly bodies which regularly return to a particular spot. The Earth-Sun distance is all important. It is the Astronomical Unit, the measuring stick of the Universe. The average Earth-Sun distance has been accepted as 92,897,400 mi., triangulated from the Earth-Eros baseline. This may be 50,000 to 100,000 mi. wrong. Use of the Earth-Reinmuth Object baseline, said Dr. Edwin Brant Frost, blind retiring director of the Yerkes Observatory at Williams Bay, Wis., will reduce the error to within 10,000 mi., or about twice the longitudinal distance from Washington to Rome.

* At Uccle outside Brussels. * Satellite Phoebe (200 mi. diam.) is 8,034,000 mi. from its planet Saturn; Satellites Sixth (100 mi.) & Seventh (40 mi.) are 7,200,000 and Satellites Eighth (40 mi.) and Ninth (20 mi.) are 14,750,000 mi. from their Planet Jupiter.

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