Nov 9 1977
From The Space Library
The Washington Post reported that Charles Kowal of the Calif. Inst. of Technology had discovered "something out there in space that orbits the sun roughly 2 million miles out once every 115 yr or so," but had not "the slightest idea" what it was. "You might say it's a mini- planet," far too small to be a conventional planet but as big as some asteroids, about 100 to 400m in diameter; "It really doesn't resemble anything else. It is definitely not a satellite of any planet or a comet. . . ." Kowal, a veteran at discovering new objects in the solar system, had detected the 13th moon of Jupiter and another object that might be the 14th; he had located the latest unusual body while working with the 48in telescope at Mt. Palomar Oct. 18-19 and had been trying to establish its orbit so that other astronomers could check it out. Researchers would need 2 or 3wk to determine the orbit, lying beyond Saturn and possibly both inside and outside the orbit of Uranus, "maybe going out as far as Neptune," between 1.3 million and 2.7 million miles from the sun. If the object should be defined as a planet, Kowal by tradition would have the privilege of naming it. Final decision on whether or not it was a planet would be made by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Laboratory in Cambridge, Mass. (W Post, Nov 9/77, A-17)
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