Abstract
NEARLY sixty years have passed since it first occurred to the philosophic mind of Sir John Herschel to attempt an arrangement of the relative brilliancy of the stars, upon a method that should be more secure than the eye estimations that had done duty for many centuries. It is not necessary to enter into any description of his method, which may be regarded now as entirely superseded. Doubtless, had he been surrounded by skilled workmen, furnished with better tools, the cumbrous method employed would have been simplified, but the establishment of an observatory remote from the assistance and contrivances of the workshop is not without drawbacks, as he and others since have discovered and regretted. About the same time, Seidel, in Germany, was at work on the same problem, and the fact that two astronomers, independently of each other, undertook the solution of the same problem, is a proof that it was ripe for mature consideration, while the series of astronomers who have laboured in the same path confirms the suspicion that this kind of investigation too long neglected offered a field having a rich prospect of reward.
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Improvements in Photometry. Nature 51, 558–561 (1895). https://doi.org/10.1038/051558d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/051558d0