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Binary Stars: Historical Milestones

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2016

Hans Zinnecker
Hans Zinnecker*
Affiliation:
Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam, An der Sternwarte 16, D–14482 Potsdam, Germany

Abstract

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This is a brief historical review of the discovery of binary stars, starting in the 18th and 19th century with the work of W. Herschel, W. Struve, and their famous sons. I describe how Ch. Doppler in 1842 found the Doppler effect in connection with the colours of double stars. I also describe how the observation of the stationary Calcium H and K lines in the spectrum of the spectroscopic binary δ Ori led to the discovery of the interstellar medium by J. Hartmann in 1904 with the Potsdam refractor. Some steps in the discovery of young binary stars are recounted, starting with the paper of Joy and van Biesbroeck in 1944. The history of ideas regarding the origin of binary systems is also briefly reviewed, beginning with J. Michell's statistical argument in 1767 that many close visual pairs of stars must indeed form physical systems, and W. Herschel's definition of a binary star as “a real double star - the union of two stars that are formed together in one system, by the laws of attraction”.

Type
I. Introduction
Information
Symposium - International Astronomical Union , Volume 200: The Formation of Binary Stars , 2001 , pp. 1 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of the Pacific 2001 

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