Proctor’s statement that, in the thirty years following, the companion had “conformed fairly well with the calculated orbit.”
According to the Annual Record of Science and Industry, 1876-18, the companion, in half the time mentioned by Proctor, had not moved in the calculated orbit. In the Astronomical Register, 15-186, there are two diagrams by Flammarion: one is the orbit of the companion, as computed by Auwers; the other is the orbit, according to a mean of many observations. They do not conform fairly well. They do not conform at all.
I am now temporarily accepting that Flammarion and the other observing astronomers are right, and that the writers like Proctor, who do not say that they made observations of their own, are wrong, though I have data for thinking that there is no such companion-star. When Clark turned his telescope upon Sirius, the companion was found exactly where Auwers said it would be found. According to Flammarion and other astronomers, had he looked earlier or later it would not have been in this position. Then, in the name of the one calculus that astronomers seem never to have heard of, by what circumstances could that star have been precisely where it should be, when looked for, Jan. 31, 1862, if, upon all other occasions, it would not be where it should be?
Astronomical Register, 1-94:
A representation of Sirius—but with six small stars around him—an account, by Dr. Dawes, of observations, by Goldschmidt, upon the “companion” and five other small stars near Sirius. Dr. Dawes’ accusation, or opinion, is that it scarcely seems possible that some of these other stars were not seen by Clark. If Alvan Clark saw six stars, at various distances from Sirius, and picked out the one that was at the required distance, as if that were the only one, he dignifies our serials with a touch of something other than comedy. For Goldschmidt’s own announcement, see Monthly Notices, R. A. S., 23-181, 243.
