A major astronomical loss was suffered by the Harvard Observatory in 1944, Harlow Shapley, director of the Observatory and Paine Professor of Practical Astronomy, revealed Sunday in his annual report.

The sinking in the Atlantic last summer of the S.S. Robin Goodfellow cost the University, according to the report, one-fifth of a year's photographic plates from the observatory at Bloemfortein, South Africa, which maintains a constant photo coverage of the southern skies. This was the first shipment of plates risked in two years from great quantities at Bloemfortein awaiting transfer to Harvard for analysis.

But despite the war, Professor Shapley declared, Harvard continued its worldwide astronomical contacts. As a special wartime service, a monthly survey of astronomical news, gathered with great difficulty from throughout the world, was distributed to 100 American astronomers away on war duty, and also to many astronomers of other countries.

Among the major discoveries of the year reported by the Harvard Observatory in this capacity of announcement agency for observatories in the Western Hemisphere, were Van Biesbroeck's finding of a star with the lowest known candle power; Luyten's finding of a pair of white super-dense dwarf stars; the discovery of comets by observers in Finland and New Zealand; and the discovery by Kuiper o fan atmosphere of methane and ammonia on Titan, the largest satellite of Saturn.