Published in the October 1970 National Newsletter. [PDF]

The Moon that Never Was (Maybe?)

After reading about the “Planet That Never Was” in the last issue of the NEWSLETTER, I thought that our readers might be interested in a satellite which was photographed 13 times near the turn of the century but has never been seen since. This was Themis, a supposed tenth moon of Saturn.

The Fixed (?) Stars

At a recent astronomical seminar, I was reminded by a speaker that our term, the “fixed stars” is not really correct. Stars do move across the sky, their motion being a combination of two measurable quantities, "radial velocity”, or motion in the line of sight, and "proper motion", motion across the line of sight. These motions are extremely slow, although they can be measured with accurate astronomical instruments. To the unaided eye, however, the stars appear to be stationary, unless studied over a lengthy period of time.

A science fiction story written by Ken Chilton, date unknown.

This is a transcription of the letter:

IKW June 26 [1960]

Dear Ruth,

Here are the prints you selected from our Annual Meeting collection. I relied on the list of numbers Mr. MacLennan gave me and hope I haven't made any mistakes. Also enclosed is [a] duplicate of a slide of Dr. McKellar, taken by Constantine [Papacosmos], which we thought was exceptionally good.