compared a chart directly with the heavens to the finding a star absent, which his calculations showed was about where Neptune should have been at the time. Walker found that Lalande could only have swept in the neighborhood of Neptune on the 8th and 10th of May, 1795. By assuming different eccentricities for Neptune's orbit under two hypotheses for the place of its perihelion, he found a star catalogued on the latter date which sufficiently satisfied his computations. He predicted that on searching the sky this star would be found missing. On the next fine evening Professor Hubbard looked for it, and the star was gone. It had been Neptune.[1]
This discovery enabled elliptic elements to be computed for it, when the surprising fact appeared that it was not moving in anything approaching the orbit either Leverrier or Adams had assigned. Instead of a mean distance of 36 astronomical units or more, the stranger was only at 30. The result so disconcerted Leverrier that he declared that "the small eccentricity which appeared to result from Mr. Walker's computations would be incompatible with the nature of the perturbations of the planet Herschel," as he called Uranus. In other words, he expressly denied that Neptune was his planet. For the newcomer proceeded to follow the path Walker had computed. This
- ↑ Proc. Amer. Acad., Vol. I, p. 64.
