NEW PLANETS NEAR THE SUN. 



reconcile this view of the supposed new planet with 

 Professor Watson's. If three careful estimates showed 



N 



Sun 



W 



c 



Stranger 



Fig. 2. Swift's new Planet? 



Swift the stranger and Theta situated as in fig. 2, it is 

 absolutely certain that either Watson's observation was 

 very far from the truth, or else the strange orb he saw 

 was not the same that Swift saw. On the o her hand, if 

 Watson's observation was trustworthy, it is certain that either 

 Swift's three estimates were inexact or he saw a different 

 new body. Again, their accounts of the relative brightness 

 of Theta and the stranger could not possibly be reconciled 

 if we supposed they were observing the same new planet, 

 for Watson says distinctly that the stranger was very much 

 brighter than Theta j while Swift says, with equal distinct- 

 ness, that the two stars were equally bright. 



If we accept both observations, we must consider that the 

 strange orb seen by Swift was not the nearer to the sun, but 

 the other, for Watson, in his letter to Sh G. Airy, says that 

 he saw both Theta and his own new planet, and he could 

 not have overlooked Swift's new planet, if placed as in fig. 

 2, whereas if the star there marked as the stranger were 

 really Theta, Watson might readily enough have overlooked 

 the other star, as farther away from his newly- discovered 

 planet. According to this view, the actual arrangement at 

 the time of the eclipse was as shown in fig. 3. 



But this is not quite all. Professor Watson saw another 

 body, which in his opinion was a planet. I have already 

 mentioned that he thought Zeta remarkably bright. It 

 seemed to him a star of nearly the third magnitude, whereas 

 Zeta Cancri is only of the fifth. Nay, speaking of the 



2 



