Vulcan has long been seen as a fictional planet of Doctor Spock, however at one time it was seen as the holy grail of the astrological community.

Back in 1781 William Herschel discovered Uranus, but it wasn’t long before people stated to notice irregularities with its orbit. It simply wouldn’t fit into the Newtonian model of cosmos. It soon became clear that there must be something affecting Uranus’s orbit. But what was it? And where was it?

There was simply no easy way to explain the conundrum, it had to be some heavenly body as yet unknown to science, but no one knew where to start looking.

Then two men, working independently set about solving the problem of finding that which was disturbing its orbit.

John C. Adams of England and Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier of France were both mathematicians, destined to advance the world of astronomy.

To try and find the planet they first had to calculate all the other planets, the sun and moons gravitational influences on the Uranus.

In 1846 La Verrier published a paper, which soon led to the discovery of Neptune.

With the success of this La Verrier looked at Mercury, which also had an unexplained orbit. This indicated yet another planet, or maybe an asteroid belt there for the finding and this time closer to the sun that any large body previously found.

While La Verrier was trying to work out the mathematics, Lescarbault an amateur astrologer reported a sighting of a planet he named Vulcan, just here La Verrier was looking inside the orbit of Mercury.

Lescabault named the planet after the Greek god Vulcan, blacksmith god.

Not only did Vulcan have an effect on Mercury but just as in the Greek legends where Vulcan caught Mars it its grasp, so to it seemed did Vulcan the Planet have a gravitational affect on Mars. And like Ethiop, Vulcan’s son, most weather prophet who uses this planet in analysis claims that it controls aerial currents on the Earth’s surface. Whether this is relating more to the solar winds of the sun its self or not I’m not quite sure, you decide.

Lescarbault calculated the planets movements, which placed its orbit at 19 days 7 hours, and sent his findings to La Verrier who was now Frances leading Astrologer.

This wasn’t the first sighting either, La Verrier found that over the years there had been at least eight other reported sightings.

This was just what La Varrier was looking for, it was to small to explain Mercury’s orbit fluctuations, but it could be one of the major bodies of an asteroid belt.

With this report all eyes turned once more to the skies, trying to spot this slippery planet and its other components of the asteroid belt, while La Varrier struggled with the mathematics.

The task was set to find the answer.

The trouble was because of the suns glare it only seemed possible it see is planet on a solar eclipse.

La Verrier never could prove it, and he died before Einstein’s theory of relativity explained Mercury’s orbit with out the need of a heavenly body. However some people still believe it is out there waiting for some one to pin-point it even with Einstein’s theory and every few years there’s a report of something seen at the time of the solar eclipse. So what are theres people seeing sun spots?

Prof. Wolf at the Zurich sunspot data centre has found some curious “dots”. With his and other findings, leading to more than two dozen it seems that there could be two large bodies orbiting the sun inside the orbit of Mercury. One has been projected at 26 days and the other at 38 days, could one of these bee Vulcan?

The sun’s covered by the moon. Asteroids? Or maybe some form of a solar flare or fireball? Or just passing comets?

In theory seventies two researchers spotted something which could fit the Vulcan orbit but since then they were assumed to be close passing comets. So is that an end to the story?