Saturn's Canker (Cont'd)

Indignant snorts on behalf of two amateur astronomers went up in London and in Potsdam as the ringed planet Saturn last week placidly continued to whirl in & out of Earthling's sight the great spot which last fortnight erupted on its protuberant belly (TIME, Aug. 14). Washington's Naval Observatory, their snorts made it appear, had not kept the spot under observation for a seemly length of time after Astronomer John Edwin Willis sighted it. The British Astronomical Association said that one Will Hay, music-hall comedian and amateur stargazer, had spotted the spot 26 hours before Astronomer Willis saw it. The Potsdam Astro-Physical Laboratory said that Dr. Weber, Reich Bureau of Standards physicist, had spotted the spot one hour before Comedian Hay. Impression created was that both the Potsdam Laboratory and the British Association, when they heard from their respective informants, had kept discreetly mum until something more could be ascertained.

But little else had been ascertained last week. The spot seemed to be enlarging-- 8,000 mi. across--which to some astronomers suggested it might be a cloud of dust kicked up by the impact of a huge meteorite. Others thought that, since the spot was observed to rotate precisely in the schedule determined for the planet by the late Professor Asaph Hall (10 hr. 14 min. 24 sec.), it could not be a drifting cloud, might be a volcanic eruption in a fixed area. To still others a volcano on cold Saturn seemed hardly more imaginable than spontaneous combustion in a snowball.* Still an enigma is Saturn's canker.

* Recent measurements at Mt. Wilson put Saturn's surface temperature at about 750DEG below zero centigrade.

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