Astronomer and mathematician, * Minden 7/22/1784, † Königsberg (Prussia, Germany) 3/17/1846; first merchant, since 1810 professor for astronomy and director of the observatory at Königsberg. Bessel worked out important results about astronomical and geodetic fundamental parameters (Bessel normal ellipsoid, Bessel-year) and about position astronomy.
His exact positionings made authentic calculations of the self-movement of fixed stars possible on whose disturbances he deduced the existence of binary stars. With the aid of the Frauenhofer-Heliometer he was the first to determine a fixed-star-parallax (61 Cygni) in 1838.
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