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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 August 2015
A common method of determining the mass of a planet is to solve for the orbit of some other object several times with different trial values for the mass in question. It is pointed out that a parabola fitted to the values of the sums of the squares of the residuals may be used to obtain, not only the planetary mass, but also its probable error. Marsden's determination of the mass of Saturn from observations of Hidalgo is used as an example.