Vulcan (Astronomy)
Also known as the "Ghost Planet."
A celestial body that was thought to be the closest planet to the Sun, circling it inside the orbit of Mercury, but that it was later proven to do not exist.
The belief in the existence of Vulcan sprung in the 17th century due to irregularities in Mercury's motion that seemed to signal the existence a planet inside Mercury's orbit. French mathematician and astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier made world famous by the discovery of Neptune on the basis of his calculations was the one that believed so, and his faith in the planet was never shaken, even though the only chance of glimpsing it would be either to catch it in transit across the Sun's face, or identify it at the time of a total solar eclipse.
In 1859 Lescarbault, a French country doctor and amateur astronomer, announced that he had seen the planet in transit; Le Verrier made haste to see him and accepted the story. Confirmation was lacking, but there was a revival of interest in 1878, when two well-known observers Swift and Watson surveyed the neighborhood of the totally eclipsed Sun and reported finding not one Vulcan, but several. Again, no proof or confirmation was forwarded.
Vulcan does not exist, and never did; the hunt for it was finally abandoned after the total solar eclipse of 1929.
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Source: NASA.
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