Our Astronomical Column

Abstract

THE MULTIPLE STAR ζ CANCRI.—This remarkable stellar system has justly attracted much attention ever since Sir W. Herschel discovered in 1781 that it was really composed of three, not two stars, the principal star being itself a close double. But,the interest with which the system was regarded was greatly increased by the remarkable paper which Prof. O. Struve produced upon the subject, and communicated to the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1874 (Comptes rendus, vol. Ixxix. p. 1463), and in which he pointed out a noteworthy inequality in the motion of the distant companion C, having a period of about twenty years. The question was again taken up by Prof. Hugo Seeliger in 1881, in a paper entitled “Ueber die Bewegungverhältnisse in dem dreifachen Sternsystem ζ Cancri,”and presented to the Vienna Academy of Sciences on May 5 of that year. Prof. Seeliger has continued his discussion of the observations of the star, and has recently published a further paper on the subject, which appears in the Memoirs of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Munich, under the title “Fortgesetzte Untersuchungun ueber das mehrfache Sternsystem ζ Cancri.” The result of his further labours has been in effect to confirm the results he had obtained in his earlier work, and those which Prof. Struve had brought out in 1874.