Abstract
THE MASS OF MERCURY.—In the Bulletin Astronomique for October Herr Backlund has published a new determination of the mass of Mercury deduced from the perturbations produced in the motion of Encke's comet arising from its close proximity to the planet in 1878. From the apparitions of the comet in 1871, 1875, 1878, 1881, and 1885, Herr Backlund finds the reciprocal of the mass of Mercury to be 2,668,700,—thus making the mass of the planet considerably larger than has been found by recent investigators. And Herr Backlund states that, even supposing the acceleration of the comet's mean motion to have been constant during the entire period 1871-85, it is not possible to represent satisfactorily the five apparitions of the comet during that period on the assumption that the reciprocal of the mass of Mercury is greater than 5,000,000.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Our Astronomical Column . Nature 35, 85 (1886). https://doi.org/10.1038/035085a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/035085a0