ASTRONOMY AND METEOROLOGY. 325 



quarter of a century ago, it outshone the brilliant Canopus, and 

 rivalled Sirius itself in splendor; now it can only just be detected 

 with the naked eye on a very clear night. — Chronicles of Sciencey 

 Jan. 1869. 



DISTANCE OF THE SUN. 



At the general meeting of the Astronomical Society, on Feb. 

 12th, it was announced that the gold medal for the year had been 

 awarded to Mr. Stone, of the Greenwich Observatory, for his la- 

 bors t(nvards the determination of the sun's distance. We have 

 already had occasion to refer at intervals to the various papers 

 which Mr. Stone has written upon this subject; and a reference 

 to the accompanying review of the proceedings of the Astronomi- 

 cal Society will show that he is still engaged on the same inter- 

 esting work. What he has done may be divided into two sections : 

 first, independent solutions of the problem of determining the sun's 

 distance ; and, secondly, the careful re-examination of the obser- 

 vations and calculations of others. He has detected numerical 

 errors in the processes of Leverrier and other mathematicians, be- 

 sides errors of interpretation in the work of those who investigated 

 the transit observations made in 1769 ; and he has given a large 

 share of attention to the consideration of the proper means of weigh- 

 ing discordant observations, — a question of great difficulty, which 

 largely enters into the problem of determining the sun's distance. 

 The result of his labors has been to show that the sun's equatorial 

 horizontal paralhix is probably about 8.91"; his distance, there- 

 fore, about 91,700,000 miles. — Journal of Science, April, 1869. 



DISCOVERY OF A NEW PLANET, THE 109TH. BY DR. E. H. F. 



PETERS, IN A LETTER TO THE EDITORS. 



I write to communicate the discovery, made here on Saturday 

 night, of a planet, the 109th of the asteroid group. It is in the 

 constelhition of Pisces, more properly in the following position : — 



1869, Oct. 9, loh. 31m. 58s., Hamilton College mean time. 

 A. R. = Oh. 56m. 2.60'^ Decl. = -j- 9° 37' 10.6". 



Its motion in declination is almost nothing ; that in right ascen- 

 sion over a minute per day. In brightness it equals a star of the 

 10th magnitude. — American Journal of Science and Arts, Nov., 

 1869. 



tempel's comet. 



I enclose an orbit for the comet discovered by Tempel on Oct. 

 11, of which no elements have yet been published in the " Astro- 

 nomische Nachrichten." . Indeed, but for an observation kindly 

 sunt me by Dr. Winnecke, and \\y>t yet printed, it would not have 

 been practicable to work out an orI)it. 



. Elements of the Orbit of TempeVs Comet, Oct. 11, 1869. —Ele- 

 ments calculated from an observation at Bonn, Oct. 12; one by 



28 



