Abstract
Vulcan will always be associated first and foremost with Le Verrier’s name, and rightly so, since it was his calculations that first lent credence to its existence. And yet it was an American astronomer, James Craig Watson (Figure 16), who became the leading figure in the strangest episode of this bizarre and eventful history. For Watson, the intramercurial quest was nothing less than an obsession.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes and References
Sources used for the life of James Craig Watson are: George C. Comstock, “Memoir of James Craig Watson, 1838–1880,” National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoirs, vol. III (Washington, D.C., 1895), pp. 45–57; Heber D. Curtis, “James Craig Watson, 1838–1880,” Michigan Alumnus Quarterly Review Summer (1938).
J. C. Freeman, “Prof. Jas. C. Watson,” Milwaukee Sentinel (June 23, 1880).
Comstock, “Memoir,” 46.
Freeman, “Prof. Jas. C. Watson.”
Comstock, “Memoir,” 47.
Ibid., 49.
Freeman, “Prof. Jas. C. Watson.”
“Dr Peters’ ‘Eunike’—his experience in Constantinople,” undated clipping in scrapbook in Mary Lea Shane Archives of the Lick Observatory.
See Joseph Ashbrook, “The Adventures of C. H. F. Peters,” in The Astronomical Scrapbook, 56–66, which contains details of the most famous lawsuit that involved Peters: the case of Peters v. Borst.
As noted in Gary W. Kronk, Comets: A Descriptive Catalog (Hillside, New Jersey: Enslow Press, 1984), 47. By longstanding tradition, comets are, with a few notable exceptions such as Halley’s, Lexell’s, and Encke’s comets, named for their discoverers.
“Dr Peters’ ‘Eunike’,” A letter from C. A. Young to G. C. Comstock, August 22, 1887, contains some additional details about the discovery. Young points out that Watson had his (and also some of the French astronomer Cha-cornac’s) star charts with him. “As to Juewa,” writes Young, “he did say that the minute he looked into the field, and before he had examined the chart with any care, he at once recognized the presence of an interloper by his memory of the field alone.... But he had a chart of the field, and used it. The field had a certain peculiar configuration in it... such that an interloper was made pretty conspicuous by it [and] I think he had used the very stars as comparison stars in the obs[ervatio]n of some planet within a year or two, so that the field was specially impressed upon his memory.” From University of Wisconsin Archives, Department of Astronomy Records, George C. Corn-stock Papers.
Quoted by W. H. DeShon, Hamilton Literary Monthly (October 1876), p. 115.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1997 Richard Baum and William Sheehan
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Baum, R., Sheehan, W. (1997). The Ghost Goes West. In: In Search of Planet Vulcan. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6100-6_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6100-6_14
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-306-45567-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-6100-6
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive