ZONE OF PLANETS BETWEEN MARS AND JUPITER. 59 



the north declination increased. On the following even- 

 ing, as soon as the twilight permitted, he looked again 

 for his star ; it no longer formed an equilateral triangle 

 with the stars above mentioned, but had moved con- 

 siderably in the direction indicated by the preceding 

 night's observations. On the 30th, after again observing 

 the planet, Dr. Olbers wrote to Bode at Berlin, and to 

 Baron De Zach, giving an . account of his discovery. 

 " What a singular accident," he exclaims, u was it by 

 which I found this stranger nearly in the same place 

 where I had observed Ceres on the 1st of January !' 

 The elements of the orbit were quickly determined by 

 Professor Gauss, who found the most remarkable pe- 

 culiarity consisted in the great inclination of its plane to 

 the ecliptic, which amounted to 34 35'. The orbit was 

 found to be an ellipse of not much greater eccentricity 

 than that of Mercury, with a mean distance nearly the 

 same as that of Ceres. Dr. Olbers suggested Pallas as the 

 name for this new member of our system. 



A comparison of the relative magnitudes of the planet- 

 ary orbits had suggested the existence of an unknown 

 planet, revolving between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. 

 Instead of one planet, however, tw6 had been discovered. 

 Olbers remarked that the orbits of these two bodies ap- 

 proached very near each other at the descending node of 

 Pallas, and he conjectured that they might possibly be 

 the fragments of a larger planet which had once revolved 

 in the same region, and had been shivered in pieces by 

 some tremendous catastrophe ; and he intimated that 



