Professor Airy received a copy of this paper before the end of the
month, and was astonished to find that Leverrier's theoretical place for
the planet was within 1 deg. of the place Adams had assigned to it eight
months before. So striking a coincidence seemed sufficient to justify a
Herschelian sweep for a week or two. But a sweep for so distant a planet
would be no easy matter. When seen through a large telescope it would
still only look like a star, and it would require considerable labor and
watching to sift it out from the other stars surrounding it. We know
that Uranus had been seen twenty times, and thought to be a star, before
its true nature was discovered by Herschel; and Uranus is only about
half as far away as Neptune.
Neither at Paris nor at Greenwich was any optical search undertaken; but
Professor Airy wrote to ask M. Leverrier the same old question that he
had fruitlessly put to Adams: Did the new theory explain the errors of
the radius vector or not? The reply of Leverrier was both prompt and
satisfactory--these errors were explained, as well as all the others.
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