Skywatch for the week of September 25,2023 wqcs.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wqcs.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Wayne Harris-Wyrick
Special to The Oklahoman
On March 13, 1781, astronomer William Herschel pointed his telescope into the night sky and discovered the planet Uranus, the first such discovery in historical times. Over the next 45 years, as astronomers observed Uranus looking for possible moons, they realized its orbit didn’t follow the known laws of gravity. Some astronomers surmised that perhaps Newton’s gravitational laws didn’t work so far from the sun.
But two mathematicians decided that the discrepancy occurred due to the gravitational attraction of an eighth planet even farther out. Unbeknownst to each other, French astronomer Rubin Le Perrier and British mathematician John Couch Adams both began calculating the likely position of such a planet based on the aberrations of the orbit of Uranus. On Sept. 23, 1846, French astronomer Johanne Galle found Neptune within one degree of the predicted position. Neptune’s gravitational pull affecting the orbit of Uranus led to i