Resolving mysteries about the first stellar parallaxes and distances

Bonn, Germany (SPX) Nov 22, 2020

In 1838, Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel won the race to measure the first distance to a star other than our Sun via the trigonometric parallax - setting the first scale of the universe. Recently, Mark Reid and Karl Menten, who are engaged in parallax measurements at radio wavelengths, revisited Bessel's original publications on "his" star, 61 Cygni, published in the Astronomische Nachrichten (As