Editing Vulcan (hypothetical planet) (section)

=== Claimed discovery ===
On 22 December 1859, Le Verrier received a letter from Lescarbault, saying that he had seen a transit of the hypothetical planet on March 26 of that year. Le Verrier took the train to the village of [[Orgères-en-Beauce]], some {{convert|70|km}} south-west of [[Paris]], to Lescarbault's home-made observatory. Le Verrier arrived unannounced and proceeded to interrogate the man.<ref name="Levenson">{{cite book |last1=Levenson |first1=Thomas |title=The hunt for Vulcan: ... and how Albert Einstein destroyed a planet, discovered relativity, and deciphered the universe |year=2015 |publisher=Random House |isbn=9780812998986 |edition=First |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/huntforvulcanand0000leve }}</ref>

Lescarbault described in detail how, on 26 March 1859, he observed a small black dot on the face of the [[Sun]].<ref>{{citation|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1cohAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA336 |title=A Promised Transit of Vulcan|newspaper=[[The Spectator]]|volume=52|page=336|date=15 March 1879}}</ref> After some time had passed, he realized that it was moving. He thought it looked similar to the transit of [[Mercury (planet)|Mercury]] which he had observed in 1845. He estimated the distance it had already traveled, made some measurements of its position and direction of motion and, using an old clock and a pendulum with which he took his patients' pulses, estimated the total duration of the transit (coming up with 1 hour, 17 minutes, and 9 seconds).<ref name="Levenson" />

Le Verrier was not happy about Lescarbault's crude equipment but was satisfied the physician had seen the transit of a previously unknown planet. On 2 January 1860, he announced the discovery of the new planet with the proposed name from mythology, "Vulcan",<ref name=dumezil>{{cite book
 | first=Georges | last=Dumézil | author-link=Georges Dumézil
 | others=trans. Philip Krapp
 | title=Archaic Roman Religion: Volume One | orig-year=1966
 | date=1996 | publisher=[[Johns Hopkins University Press]]
 | location=Baltimore | isbn=978-0-8018-5482-8
 | pages=320–321 }}</ref> at the meeting of the [[Académie des Sciences]] in Paris. Lescarbault, for his part, was awarded the [[Légion d'honneur]] and invited to appear before numerous learned societies.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Proctor|first1=Richard A.|title=Leverrier and the Discovery of Neptune|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1877/09/30/archives/leverrier-and-the-discovery-of-neptune-tune.html|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|date=September 30, 1877}}</ref>

However, not everyone accepted the veracity of Lescarbault's "discovery". An eminent French astronomer, [[Emmanuel Liais]], who was working for the Brazilian government in [[Rio de Janeiro]] in 1859, claimed to have been studying the surface of the Sun with a telescope twice as powerful as Lescarbault's, at the very moment that Lescarbault said he observed his mysterious transit. Liais, therefore, was "in a condition to deny, in the most positive manner, the passage of a planet over the sun at the time indicated".<ref>''Popular Science'', Volume 13, pages 732-735, 1878.</ref>

Based on Lescarbault's "transit", Le Verrier computed Vulcan's orbit: it supposedly revolved about the Sun in a nearly circular orbit at a distance of {{Convert|21|e6km|AU mi}}. The period of revolution was 19 days and 17 hours, and the orbit was inclined to the [[ecliptic]] by 12 degrees and 10 minutes (an incredible degree of precision). As seen from the Earth, Vulcan's greatest [[Elongation (astronomy)|elongation]] from the Sun was 8 degrees.<ref name="Levenson" />