Whipple Charts Another Comet in Photograph Accidentally Recording Undiscovered Satellite

Fred L. Whipple, instructor in Astronomy, has discovered a new comet and with the help of an assistant has computed its orbit, it was announced at the Observatory yesterday. The comet was discovered by accident on a photographic plate taken with the 16 inch refracting telescope at the Oak Ridge observatory in Harvard, Massachusetts.

Although the comet has net been seen by eye even through the telescope, three photographs, including the discovery one, have given enough material to Whipple so that he can compute accurately how long it takes the comet to describe its elipse around the sun and at what point in the sky the comet will be at any given time.

A complete trip of the comet around the sun takes about seven years and one half and the route shows one of the smallest deviations from a fine circle of any known comet. This fact makes the comet appear very much like an asteroid and it was extremely hard to recognize for this reason.

The comet will be in the range of cameras under the telescope until February and, because the earth travels around the sun much faster than the comet, we may see it again later after a period when the sun is between us and the comet.

At one time comet hunting was a favorite hobby among amateur astronomers and was encouraged to the extent of a $200 bonus for every new discovery. This popular interest was due mostly to the spectacular nature of the larger comets and is not so moved by the discovery of invisible ones to which the field has of late been reduced From the scientific point of view the recording of comets is important so that general laws can be made for a hitherto mysterious dement in the sky. It was once figured that people devoting full time to the search for comets spent on the average 400 hours of actual observation between each discovery.