Word: asteroidal
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Lopsided Planet. Eros is one of hundreds of asteroids (small planets) spinning around the sun as devotedly as if they were big planets. Mostly their orbits lie between Mars and Jupiter. The egg-shaped orbit of Eros, however, swings it far inside the Martian track and it is possible for it to approach within 14,000.000 miles of Earth. After its discovery in 1898. asteroid watchers noticed that sometimes Eros varied in brightness over a period of 5¼ hr. If this was the period of its rotation, the variation might have been due to one side being much darker...
However, yesterday morning word was had from the Poles, that they were sorry, but Mr. Kwick, evidently of an impulsive temperament, had made a mistake, and the new asteroid was only a scratch on the photographic plate...
Discovered only yesterday morning by Polish astronomer Kwlek of the Poznan Observatory, the strange object is believed to be an unusual asteroid or small planet similar to the Delporte object which last spring set the astronomical world agog with its close approach to earth...
...Friday, February, 7, this new body was only one and a half million miles from the earth according to calculations made at the time. This is extremely close, for rarely has any other asteroid come within 50 million miles before. At the present time the asteroid is receding from the earth at the rate of a million miles a day and will continue at this pace for several weeks...
...asteroid is now fainter than the sixteenth magnitude, and probably very few, if any, additional observations will be obtained at this appearance...