![]() Witte and Ram both claimed to have discovered new planets by the careful study of their transits through horoscopes. The classic case is that of the hypothetical planets. It is of course very easy to find meaning where none exists. Vesta is dedication to work for Dobyns, service for Donat, the 'focusing of the self' for George, and domesticity for H. Pallas means creativity for Demetria George, 'prudent intellect' for Emma Donat, but politics for Dobyns. Ceres is associated with nurturing by Zipporah Dobyns, but with agriculture and the working classes by Barry Lynes. Those astrologers who employ asteroids frequently differ as to their significance. On the other hand, if the traditional chart is, say, 75% complete, then each planet is over a thousand times more significant than each asteroid. If each asteroid had the effect of a planet, then, with nearly 4000 missing planets, a conventional chart would be worthless. Ancient astrologers had seven out of ten planets, and so one might expect their interpretations to be at least 70% correct. The trouble with asteroids from an astrologer's point of view is that there are too many of them. Many have elongated orbits which cross the paths of Mars or Jupiter, and some even move inside the orbit of the Earth. It is difficult to say just how many - how big does a lump of rock have to be before you call it an asteroid? Not all of the asteroids lie between Mars and Jupiter. Nearly 4000 have now been catalogued, and there are many more. In the 1840s discoveries began again, and the number has grown steadily. Their distances ranged from 2.0 to 2.6 AU. Olbers found Pallas in 1802 and Vesta in 1807, while Harding discovered Juno in 1804. ![]() But Ceres was not alone, for two other of the 'policemen' were also successful. They were beaten to it by Giuseppe Piazzi of Palermo, who found Ceres on New Year's Day 1801 - at 2.8 AU, exactly as required. In 1800 Johann Schroeter organised a group of German astronomers, whom he nicknamed the 'Celestial Police', to hunt down the missing planet. This assumption was strengthened in 1781 when William Herschel identified Uranus at a distance of 19.2 astronomical units, very close to the predicted position after Saturn, which gives a result according to Bode's law of 19.6. As Bode remarked, something seems to be missing between Mars and Jupiter.
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