
His cataloguing of 3222 stars was refined in 1807 by Friedrich Bessel, the father of modern astrometry.

As the stellar movement proved too insignificant for his telescope, he focused on the discovered the aberration of light and the nutation of the Earth’s axis. The next big advancement was in the 10th century when Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi carried out observations on the stars and described their positions, magnitudes and star color.Īnother notable event in astrometry was in 1729 when James Bradley became the 1st scientist to attempt to measure stellar parallaxes. In doing so, he also developed the brightness scale still in use today. This catalog resulted in Hipparchus cataloging with at least 850 stars and their positions. Some of the earliest star catalogs can be dated back to Hipparchus, who around 190 BC used the catalogs of his predecessors Timocharis and Aristillus to discover Earth’s precession. The history of astrometry is linked to the history of star catalogues, which gave astronomers reference points for objects in the sky so they could track their movements. If you’re curious about a great website that can help perform astrometry on your astrophotography, check out this great article on the subject. The information obtained by astrometric measurements provides information on the kinematics and physical origin of the Solar System and our galaxy, the Milky Way.


The definition of astrometry is, “the measurement of the positions, motions, and magnitudes of stars.” As a branch of astronomy, astrometry involves precise measurements of the positions and movements of stars and other celestial bodies.
