17th March 1846 death of Friedrich Bessel
Bessel a German astronomer is best remembered for being the first person to work out the distance to a star. He discovered in 1838 the distance to 61 Cygni by using the parallax method.
On This Day (2)
17th March 1899 discovery of Saturn moon Phoebe
W H Pickering discovered Phoebe on the 17th March 1899 from photographic plates taken on 16th Aug 1898. The moon is roughly spherical with a diameter of 213 km. Phoebe was named after one of the original female Titans or Titanesses from Greek mythology
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