PlanetsPlanet O? You've got to be kidding!
Nope, not even a little - believe it or not,
at one time Planet O was a part of our solar system.
That's right...Around 1905 (wow! 94 years ago), a fellow named Percival Lowell had set out to find why the orbits of the planets Uranus and Neptune were different from the rest of the six known planets. Another fellow became his partner - William Pickering. Both men became obsessed with the idea of finding whatever it was that was causing the difference in orbits. They thought it must be an undiscovered planet.
But, unfortuately, Lowell died in 1916. Pickering continued the search. He was so sure it was a planet that was influencing Neptune, that he named it Planet O. The reason it was named Planet O was because O is the next letter in the alphabet and since Neptune was the last planet discovered and named, he had no other better reason than to name the newest, undiscovered planet, Planet O.
By 1919, astronomers at the Mount Wilson observatory used their ten-inch telescope to scan the skys where Pickering had predicted the planet should be - but they found nothing. Pickering gave up with the belief that Planet O did not exist.
So, ended the work of William Pickering, but for at least three years, it had been recorded that Planet O was in our solar system. More time went by, ten years, with no further work spent on finding Planet O. Then, yet another astronomer took up the quest.
To continue reading about more planet mysteries in our solar system, return to the Planet page and click on Planet X.