220 THE MINOR PLANET MT Itjll. 



over a few weeks. In this case the observations were spread 

 over only a few hours, and Gauss's method was useless. Let 

 me say here that if exact process seemed to fail, a clever judg- 

 ment was not so much at fault, because, with only the three 

 observations before him. Dr. Crommelin. of the Greenwich 

 Observatory, wrote :— 



" The fact that the second and third observations were on the 

 opposite sides. of the meridian enahles us to get an approximate value of 

 the distance from the Earth : a distance of o.t8 will make the motion in 

 R.A. uniform when reduced to the centre of the Earth. If we suppose 

 MT to have a perihelion distance the same as that of Eros, an orbit 

 slightly more eccentric than his, with an inclination of some "°, will 

 satisfy the observations. . . . Tt is to be feared that MT will remain 

 one of the unsolved enigmas of astronomy."* 



But in spite of the ill conditions of the problem, orbits and 

 ephemerides for MT were worked out. One by Herr Franz 

 appeared in the AstronoiniscJic Nachrichten of 1912 May 8. but 

 Herr Franz had kindly sent us an advance MS. copy. 

 Although we know now that the ephemeris was not far out. a 

 search by both Mr. Wood and myself was fruitless. YVe then 

 received an ephemeris from Professor A. O. Leuschner. of 

 Berkeley, California, which had been computed by his now- 

 celebrated " Short Method " by two of his pupils, Messrs. Haynes 

 and Pitman, but again a long search by myself was fruitless. 

 But. as usual, our good colleagues at Greenwich and Heidelber? 

 had not been idle. They had also photographed the regions 

 where MT might reasonably be expected to be found, and the 

 new ephemerides led to renewed searches. On June [3 we 

 received a letter from Dr. Crommelin stating that tqii MT had 

 been found on Greenwich plate of October 11. and be gave us 

 a corrected ephemeris. The result was that a search was success- 

 ful, and yielded a position for October 18. And by a later mail 

 we learnt that Dr. Wolf also found the planet on one of his 

 plates of October 17. I cannot do better than quote in extenso 

 I )r. Crommelin's remarks in the Observatory Journal.^ 



"The interesting planet MT, discovered by Palisa last Octobei and 

 subsequently lost, has been unexpectedly resuscitated. The credit of this 

 is due to Messrs. Haynes and Pitman, of Berkeley. California, and also 

 to Professor Franz, of Breslau. These gentlemen computed orbits from 

 the observations by Palisa on October 3 and 4. and that by Pechule later 

 on October 4. Tt is highly to the credit of Leuschner's method that ^uch 

 accurate orbits were deduced from such a very short arc, particularly as 

 it was near opposition, a region where the equations tend to become 

 indeterminate. The ephemerides deduced from these orbits induced 

 astronomers to re-examine their plates., with the result that three un- 

 doubted images were discovered by Mr. Davidson on Greenwich plates 

 taken on October it, and a streak of the right length and direction was 

 found by Herr Ernst on a plate taken at Konigstuhl. Heidelberg, by I h-rr 

 Kaiser on October 17. As this is in fair accord with the Greenwich 

 position on October II. there is little doubt that it is correct, and there is 

 hope that still further images may be found. 



* Monthly Xotices. February, 1912, p. 298. 

 I June. 1012, pp. 243-4. 



