Sky Concerto

Studying a sky photograph taken last month with their new 48-in. Schmidt telescope, two astronomers at Palomar Observatory spotted a thin streak made by a rapidly moving object. When the streak, in slightly different positions, showed up on later photographs, the astronomers were sure they had seen something new. Last week Drs. Seth B. Nicholson and Robert S. Richardson announced that the streak was an asteroid (midget planet) only nine-tenths of a mile in diameter and about 8,000,000 miles away from the earth.

The solar system swarms with asteroids (probably fragments of a shattered planet), but the new-found asteroid is extraordinary. Instead of being almost circular, its orbit is a long ellipse. Revolving around the sun in about 360 days, it passes inside the orbit of Mercury and comes within 22 million miles of the sun. Then it recedes to 156 million miles, beyond the orbit of Mars. No other known asteroid visits both places.

Astronomers think that the new asteroid will prove a useful tool in their unearthly studies. Since it comes close to Mercury, it will help them measure (by changes in its orbit) the mass of the planet, which is not known very exactly. "But [an asteroid] is rather like a concerto," explained Dr. Richardson. "It has no real practical value."

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