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The Discovery of the Nearest Star

Glass, I. S.

In the 1830s, the double star α Centauri was the subject of the first successful stellar parallax measurement. For almost eighty years it remained the nearest star known. However, in 1915 at the Union Observatory in Johannesburg, R.T.A. Innes found a faint object near α Cen with a similar proper motion. Its parallax was measured over the following…