WHAT HAPPENED TO COMET? 3 ASTRONOMERS SEEK ANSWER

Considerable controversy has taken place during the vacation regarding the failure of Comet Cunningham to show up more clearly. Professor William H. Barton of New York's Hayden Planetarium has ridiculed it as "a washout and a rank failure."

Leland E. Cunningham, the Observatory astronomer who discovered the comet, has countered with the statement that if has lived up to expectations as far as astronomers are concerned.

Loring Andrews, former teacher of astronomy here, tried to pour oil on troubled waters with an article in the M.I.T. Review. He suggested that the comet had been coming this way for 2000 years, and was too tired to glow. Its last appearance here, he said, "was probably about the time Archimedes was crying 'Eureka'."