Last Updated, March 2003
Information about the Transneptunians is coming in to Earth at the speed of light with the new space technology that exists, including the Hubble Space Telescope, and other technology that utilizes infrared and ultraviolet cameras. Initially, ground-based telescopes revealed that there were numerous small bodies around and beyond the orbit of Pluto, and later, space telescopes even began to find planets far beyond Pluto. At the end of this article you will find website links and a bibliography that account for what you read here. Here we are in the 21st century and the idea of Transneptunian planets can no longer be rejected offhand by anyone other than the narrow-minded and those with an outdated perspective on astronomical realities. New data from the telescopes are arriving as we read, and more and more information arrives to support the assertions of German engineer/astrologer/astronomer Alfred Witte about the existence of Transneptunians as early as the 1920s. Witte, and those who worked with him, were scoffed at and ridiculed, even to the point where Witte was threatened by the Nazi secret police and ultimately committed suicide to avoid what he thought would subsequently happen to him or his family in the concentration camps. Among his colleagues were Ludwig Rudolph, who later was also harassed and censored by the Nazis. According to recently released Hamburg School documents, while the Nazis banned astrology books and imprisoned astrologers arbitrarily, certain astrology publications were nonetheless approved for distribution. Reinhold Ebertin, a student of Witte's astrology, published an astrological reference in 1940 in which he duplicated and thus passed on core techniques of Witte's in an approach amazingly similar to that of Ludwig Rudolph, whose publications had been banned in 1936. An unfortunately highly critical appraisal of Witte's work, including his use of Transneptunian planetary bodies, in the introduction to Ebertin's book, biased many against the Hamburg School for years afterward, for Ebertin's book was later translated into English as the Combination of Stellar Influences and was promoted as the authoritative reference for interpretation of midpoint astrology; and the critical comment on Transneptunians was carried with it around the world in the widely, more internationally accessible English language. Meanwhile, the earlier similar reference book based on the observations of Witte and colleagues, which included information on the Transneptunians, the Rulebook for Planetary Pictures, banned by the Nazis until after the end of World War 2, was preserved in secret by Hamburg astrologer Ludwig Rudolph. However, additional problems occurred as subsequent editing and cursory English translations obscured many of the original studies and observations. It is quite likely that the days of seeing the work of Alfred Witte as absurdity are over. It is clear that Witte was ahead of his time, and saw and knew things that the people of the past were not ready for. And the fact that he was persecuted by such a lowly, opportunistic lot as the Nazis actually speaks well for him and his work. An anthology of articles by Witte and some of his contemporaries was published by Ludwig Rudolph / Witte-Verlag in 1975, and in that book Witte writes about the four inner Transneptunians as though they are real planets, providing ephemerides and as much description of their physical characteristics as he was able to convey under the circumstances. He pointed out first of all, that emanations from the planets were, overall, increasingly subtle in quality as one moved farther away from the Sun, and also that the sunlight reflected by the planets, ranging from brighter colors for the inner planets such as Mercury and Venus, along the color spectrum to the darker colors for Pluto (which was in fact mentioned in his writings (*)), toward the ultraviolet zones of the color spectrum as one moved toward the Transneptunians. Thus Witte, already in the 1920s, asserted that the likelihood of sighting these planets with the naked eye was low because of the implied subtlety of their physical nature and the degree of visibility of the sunlight they reflect to the average human eye. A frequent but unfounded criticism of Witte's assertions about the Transneptunians is that he did not consider Pluto; yet one of his articles (*) indicates that he was well aware of the search for Pluto. What is of even more significance is that discoveries about and astronomers' reassessments of the nature of Pluto in recent years indicate that it could be more of a Chiron-like centaur, thus explaining its highly irregular orbit; while the Transneptunians of Witte, and the further Transneptunians of his colleague, Friedrich Sieggrün, are posited to have much more regular orbits. While Pluto has been determined to be hard and icy in physical composition, the Transneptunians of Witte and Sieggrün are posited to carry on the overall continuum of increasingly less dense and gaseous composition of planets as one moves away from the Sun to the outer regions of our Solar System. The exact details of how Witte made his Transneptunian discoveries are still not totally clear, as his work was banned by the Nazi government, and records were likely destroyed. Recently-released documents from Hamburg (Brummund, 2000) indicate that Witte kept a telescope sitting at his window, and worked with a pre-computer-age calculating device in performing his continual astronomical calculations. At the same time, Witte was what many would describe as a genius, and like other geniuses and inventors, crossed the boundaries beyond establishment science into the realm of metaphysics. Witte's articles indicate that he studied both the color spectrum and the music scale by precision, analytical methods, and claimed to find synchronistic links between music, color, and the planetary energies (inspired by and built upon earlier similar work by Johannes Kepler), and debated over these with famous German astrologer Walter Koch. Few astrologers have been as systematic and pragmatic in their studies of astrology as Witte was, in contrast with how more conventional astrologers have painted him to be. His brilliant and unconventional work was cut short by Gestapo harassment during his last years of life, and he has been harshly criticized by those of similar mentality since that time. Those astrologers who have openly followed in the footsteps of Witte have found repeated and convincing evidence of the effect of the Transneptunians in their work, via practical application, since the 1920s. And many of those who still giggle at the idea of Transneptunians and deny their endorsement also wonder in awe at the accuracy of the assessments based on their application in astrological work. You can survey the following bibliography to find materials on the topic and see for yourself. Those of us who openly work with the Transneptunians have sometimes been snubbed by the narrow and convention-trapped minds of the world, yet we see repeatedly that the effect of the Transneptunians is amazing, and we are excited as astronomical technology begins to unveil the mysteries of the outer regions of our infinitesimal corner of the Universe that we still occasionally slip and improperly refer to as "the" Solar System... as though there is only one. Recently, astronomical ephemerides have been compiled for newly-discovered Transneptunian objects. Observation over time is normally required before precise ephemerides can be calculated, and related validation of Witte's and Sieggrün's planets will need to wait for these extended observations to take place. It is not unlikely that there are other smaller bodies or asteroids in the Transneptunian regions that will be uncovered before the Witte and Sieggrün objects are verified, particularly since the Kuiper belt, containing numerous small asteroids, overlaps with the inner Transneptunians, including Cupido. Even early students of the new Transneptunian astronomical discoveries have reversed their initial criticisms of the Witte-Sieggrün bodies, and conceded that some of the most recent discoveries may coincide with Cupido's data. Astronomical discoveries of the future will lead us on an exciting adventure in this area. (This article will be updated as new information is made available) * The search for Leverrier's hypothesized "Pluto" was already underway years prior to 1930, and Witte was a participant in that search, as is verified by his article "Die magnetischen Farben der Tierkreiszeichen", published in the Astrologische Rundschau in June 1920. What Witte sighted instead, of course, was Cupido, and then Hades. Documentation from members of the Hamburg School indicate that Witte continued to have a telescope set up in his living quarters up to his death. As his later work was carried on in the 1930s despite Nazi banning orders, it was not, of course, widely publicized. LINKS: (Thanks go to Beth Kaiman in San Francisco and Jean-Claude deGuine in Sydney for forwarding information on some of the following links.) he 1998 November update of this link to an article by Brian Marsden at the Harvard-Smithsonian Institute for Astrophysics indicated that 200 Transneptunian objects had been located at that time, and that continued observations over time are required to ascertain truly accurate positions http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/cfa/ps/pressinfo/200TNOs.html . This 2000 June commentary by Brian Marsden points out how astronomical observations of the newly discovered Transneptunian Objects are still in great need of additional study and observation before precise ephemerides can be calculated for them: http://www.aas.org/publications/baas/v32n2/aas196/121.htm This 2000 December commentary from the European Space Agency comments on how new information on the Transneptunian regions will potentially redefine our understanding of the formation of our solar system and its planets: http://sci.esa.int/content/news/index.cfm?aid=1&cid=1&oid=25562 In 2002, the newly-discovered Quaoar, a planet-like body near Pluto, with a posited orbital period of from 285 to 288 years, was publicized. Could further observations over time account for its relationship to Cupido? Read this article from an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology -- http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~chad/quaoar/ This continually updated listing of newly discovered Transneptunian objects (with their current estimated orbital data) is posted on the Harvard University website: http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/TNOs.html Visit the Hubble Space Telescope website for continual updates on new Transneptunian discoveries -- http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/2002/17/ ] The Outer Solar System as of 2004: Robert Britt at space.com writes on the transneptunian astronomical realities revealed by current space technology. TO DATA FOR THE TRANSNEPTUNIANS OF WITTE & SIEGGRÜN _
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