In 1810, on the recommendation of A. Humboldt, Bessel was invited to take up the position of professor at the University of Konigsberg and director of the astronomical observatory under construction there, which became his brainchild. He remained here until his death on March 17, 1846.
Like Paganini with the violin, Bessel was artistically immaculate with astronomical instruments. And it was no accident that he was called the Hipparch of the 19th century. Bessel's plan for a detailed study of the sky and cataloging of stars was adopted at a number of observatories. These works, which were necessary in themselves, helped in the search for new asteroids.
An idea of Bessel's art as an observer can be obtained from the analysis of two remarkable discoveries of the scientist. First of all, let's consider his measurements of the annual parallactic displacement of stars. Many of Bessel's predecessors, even the skillful Bradley, were unable to detect the parallaxes of the stars: they were beyond the accuracy of their observations. In 1837-1838, Bessel, out of 402 observations on the heliometer, established the annual parallax of the star 61 Cygni, which turned out to be equal to 0.4. Thus, having achieved an almost tenfold increase in the accuracy of measuring the positions of stars compared to the Bradley observations, he reliably determined the distances to the stars for the first time and established the scale of interstellar distances.
The second remarkable cycle of Bessel's observations is related to Sirius and Procyon. In their visible positions, he detected periodic deviations with extremely small amplitude. To explain this phenomenon, Bessel hypothesized that Sirius and Orion have massive dark moons. Later (after his death), the hypothesis was brilliantly confirmed by observations.
These achievements were made possible not only because of Bessel's virtuosity as an observer, but also because he was perhaps the first astronomer to think about the problem of organizing and planning observations. Nowadays, it is often possible to meet with a discussion of planning problems (and optimal ones at that!) measurements and methods of their statistical processing. It would not be a mistake to consider Bessel's work as pioneering work in this area. Familiarity with the organization of observations, the choice of observation moments, and the composition of measurements in Bessel's work undoubtedly indicates that, although he did not formalize mathematically the problem of optimal measurement planning, he practically strove to do so.
When creating the foundations of practical astronomy, Bessel thought not only about the planning of observations, but also about ways to reduce the systematic errors of the instrument and the observer. At that time, there was no impersonal automatic registration of video observations, so the personal qualities of observers were essential. Bessel was the first to reliably discover the "personal instrumental difference" (personal equation) and raised the issue of eliminating "personal" errors by proper organization of observations, as well as studying the personal equation depending on external conditions. The personal equation can be very noticeable. For example, the difference between the personal equations of Bessel and V. Ya. Struve was about a second of time.
Bessel has developed ways to deal with systematic errors caused by tools. For example, Bessel's study of meridian circle errors marked an epoch in astrometry. Bessel sought to free observations from systematic errors, so that when mathematically processing the results of observations, he could deal only with random errors, the effect of which was strictly assessed by mathematical statistical methods. Le
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