Sky & Telescope - January 2023 - 7

I very much enjoyed Trudy Bell's article
" Discovering Neptune: What Really
Happened? " She mentions Benjamin
Pierce and Sears Cook finding pre-discovery
observations as far back as 1795.
In 1980, Charles Kowal and Stillman
Drake discovered that Galileo observed
Neptune on December 28, 1612, and
January 28, 1613, when it was in conjunction
with Jupiter. Galileo's notes for
his January 28, 1613, observation indicate
that he noted that Neptune was
farther away from a nearby star than it
had been the previous night, and thus
was aware of its apparent motion.
She raises the question, " Were prediscovery
sightings actually themselves
discoveries? " Despite making
the first known recorded observations
of Neptune, Galileo is not generally
recognized as its discoverer, as there
is no evidence that he followed up his
observations or that he identified it
as a planet. Uranus was observed and
mistaken for a star many times before
William Herschel identified it as a
planet, so astronomers credit him with
the discovery.
Alson Wong
Rancho Cucamonga, California
Roger F. Griffin (1935-2021)
In Roger W. Sinnott's 75, 50 & 25 Years
Ago column on page 7 of the September
issue, there was a quote from
Roger F. Griffin (about what one could
see visually in Palomar Observatory's
200-inch telescope). I had the good
fortune to meet Roger Griffin while
I was at the University of Cambridge
some years later. We lost him last year.
I won't attempt to describe his unique
career here, with several hundred papers
presenting orbits of binary and multiple
stars. But I will note he was rigorous
in his handling of data, as exemplified
in this quote I've retained from a 2013
paper: " There are some unusually bad
residuals in Table XII; it is not possible to
distinguish between stellar and instrumental
origins for them, and it seems
better to retain them in the solution
of the orbit than to reject them for no
better reason [than] we don't like them
and wish that they were not there. " We
can hope that this attitude survives in
current scientists.
Alan Whiting
Alexandria, Virginia
FOR THE RECORD
* On page 12 of the October 2022 issue,
the description of Kepler's third law of
planetary motion omitted the word " root "
from the cubed-root phase of the equation.
* In the sidebar on page 37 of the October
2022 issue, the most common elements in
the universe are hydrogen, helium, oxygen,
carbon, and neon.
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75, 50 & 25 YEARS AGO by Roger W. Sinnott
1948
1973
º January 1948
Moving a Mirror " At Rincon, where
we had stopped . . . , the truck-men
removed a large section of the trailer
to shorten the length for the curves
ahead. Once started up the mountain,
there was no turning back, and
the 20-foot crate which held the
largest eye in the world sometimes
straddled the entire road, even in
places where the mountainside
dropped a sheer 1,000 feet.
" But in spite of the bad weather,
1998
we were up to the observatory by 11
o'clock and the mirror was unloaded
by 12. The building was completely
breathtaking and equally freezing,
for the summit temperature was
29° Fahrenheit. . . . Reporters from
many papers and wire services,
newsreel camera and radio men
were all there, so this trip of the
century was well covered for the
general public. "
S&T staffer Nancy R. Bolton was
there as the 200-inch mirror arrived
on Palomar Mountain.
º January 1973
Sidewalk Astronomers " For a
week early last July, I accompanied
[this group] on one of their frequent
visits to Yosemite National Park,
where 7,200-foot Glacier Point
provides an observing site that is
among the best in California. The
largest telescope in our caravan
was the 24-inch Newtonian they call
Delphinium - the one with which I
did most of my observing.
" These active amateurs have
been showing the heavens to the
public for many years, not only
on the sidewalks at Fisherman's
Wharf in San Francisco, but also at
campsites and scenic high-elevation
spots around the state. They
have a host of large reflectors, each
with its own name. There is 10-inch
Heliotrope for solar observing, a pair
of 16-inch reflectors called Cyclops
and Magnificat, . . . and many more.
" The key to the society's success
is telescope maker John
Dobson's skill in figuring and
mounting mirrors made from oneinch-thick
porthole glass. "
Lee McDonald described a
novel but counterculture approach
to amateur astronomy. It would
come to be known as the Dobsonian
revolution.
º January 1998
Exoplanet Mystery " One of the
many confounding aspects of the
newly found planets around other
stars is why some of them are in
highly eccentric orbits. When planets
coalesce from a disk surrounding
the protostar . . . they should
wind up in nearly circular orbits -
just like those in our solar system.
However, the paths of three stars'
companions . . . are [noncircular.]
" Jonathan I. Katz (Washington
University) examined whether two
planets in nearly circular orbits
could have a sufficiently close
encounter that would result in
one planet being ejected from the
system and the other settling into an
orbit more akin to those of comets
and asteroids. . . . In his assessment,
[this won't work]. "
This puzzle persists.
sk yand tele scope .o r g * JANUARY 2023
7

Sky & Telescope - January 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - January 2023