Studying a sky photograph taken last month with their new 48-in. Schmidt telescope, two astronomers at Palomar Observatory spotted a thin streak made by a rapidly moving object. When the streak, in slightly different positions, showed up on later photographs, the astronomers were sure they had seen something new. Last week Drs. Seth B. Nicholson and Robert S. Richardson announced that the streak was an asteroid (midget planet) only nine-tenths of a mile in diameter and about 8,000,000 miles away from the earth.
The solar system swarms with asteroids (probably fragments of a shattered planet), but the new-found asteroid is extraordinary....
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