Frédéric Petit (astronomer)

Frédéric Petit

Frédéric Petit (Muret, 1810 – Toulouse, 1865) was a French astronomer. He was the first director of the Toulouse Observatory, located in Toulouse, France, serving from 1838–1865. In 1846 he announced that he had discovered a second moon of Earth.^[1] The theory was later dismissed by his peers, although the concept of a second smaller satellite of the Earth was used by Jules Verne in his novel From the Earth to the Moon.

References

1. Bakich, Michael E. (2000). The Cambridge Planetary Handbook. Cambridge University Press. pp. 145–146. ISBN 0-521-63280-3.