Abstract
DR. ROBERT AITKEN has given a short account of the new companion to 61 Cygni, which has aroused considerable interest because of its planetary nature (Astro. Soc. Pacific, Leaf. 177; 1943). In 1914, Hertzsprung perfected a photographic method for measuring the motion in double stars, and this method gave results of much higher accuracy than those obtained by other means. It is considered that the photographic measurements made by this method by Hertzsprung with the long-focus telescopes at Potsdam and at the Lick Observatory, and by Strand at the Sproul Observatory, are the most accurate double-star measures that have been made. When Strand plotted the measures of the two bright components of 61 Cygni, from 1914 on, he found that the curve of their relative motion was not a perfectly smooth ellipse, but a wavy line, and this wave motion could even be traced backwards from 1914 by the use of plates taken by Lewis M. Rutherford by the old wet-plate process.
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The Planetary Companion of 61 Cygni. Nature 153, 491 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/153491a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/153491a0