Abstract
STELLAR SYSTEMS.—M. Flammarion, in various notes communicated recently to the Paris Academy of Sciences, has been drawing attention to stars which appear to be affected with a common proper motion, or a motion similar in amount and in its direction. Several of his cases, however, are by no means to be styled “Nouveaux systèmes Stellaires.” Thus the large and uniform proper motions of the southern stars ζ1 and ζ2 Reticuli, to which he refers in the Comptes Rendus of November 5, were the subject of remark in NATURE, vol. xi. p. 328. That there was a probability of a common proper motion in these stars would be evident to any one who inspected the columns in the British Association Catalogue, published in 1845, but as Taylor had not observed them, and the comparison was consequently dependent upon Lacaille and Brisbane only, there was a possibility of mistake. The first confirmation of the large proper motion of the B.A.C. in ζ1 was afforded in Jacob's “mean places of 1440 stars”—from the Madras observations 1849-53, and the earliest proof of a common translation in space was given by the same observer from the Madras observations 1853-58, which formed a part of vol. xxviii. of the Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society. Not having seen any distinct reference to the very large and uniform motions of these stars in astronomical treatises, we adverted to them in NATURE as above.
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Our Astronomical Column . Nature 17, 82–83 (1877). https://doi.org/10.1038/017082d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/017082d0