Abstract
Kapteyn’s ultimate aim was to determine the arrangement of the stars in space, but this could not be done unless parallaxes (distances) of stars were measured on a wholesale basis. He did extensive measurements on special plates, taken according to a scheme he had suggested by Anders Donner at Helsingfors (Helsinki). In 1896 he finally obtained his own laboratory, albeit on a temporary basis, housed in the unused residence of the Queen’s Commissioner. Kapteyn’s star, which was found during the preparations for the Cape Photographic Durchmusterung, had the highest proper motion on the sky at the time. The matter of the credit for its discovery led to some heated correspondence between Kapteyn and Gill, resulting from some melodramatic reporting in the journal ‘the Observatory’. Kapteyn came to the conclusion that stars were too distant for measuring individual parallaxes and that the way forward was through proper motions and statistical methods.
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M.C. Escher was a Dutch graphic artist, often inspired by mathematical concepts and regularities.
- 2.
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- 3.
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Chapter 7. An Astronomical Laboratory
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van der Kruit, P.C. (2015). An Astronomical Laboratory. In: Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 416. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10876-6_7
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