under the title Fundamenta Astronomiae, of a catalogue of the places of 3,222 stars as they were in 1755. A special problem dealt with in the course of the work was that of refraction. Although the complete theoretical solution was then as now unattainable, Bessel succeeded in constructing a table of refractions which agreed very closely with observation and was presented in such a form that the necessary correction for a star in almost any position could be obtained with very little trouble. His general methods of reduction—published finally in his Tabulae Regiomontanae (1830)—also had the great advantage of arranging the necessary calculations in such a way that they could be performed with very little labour and by an almost mechanical process, such as could easily be carried out by a moderately skilled assistant. In addition to editing Bradley's observations, Bessel undertook a fresh series of observations of his own, executed between the years 1821 and 1833, upon which were based two new catalogues, containing about 62,000 stars, which appeared after his death.
278. The most memorable of Bessel's special pieces of
work was the first definite detection of the parallax of a fixed star. He abandoned the test of brightness as an
