Talk:Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve

	Biography portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
	This article is supported by the science and academia work group.

Estonia B‑class Mid‑importance

Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve is part of WikiProject Estonia, a project to maintain and expand Estonia-related subjects on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.EstoniaWikipedia:WikiProject EstoniaTemplate:WikiProject EstoniaEstonia articles

B

This article has been given a rating which conflicts with the project-independent quality rating in the banner shell. Please resolve this conflict if possible.

Mid

This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

To-do list:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Article requests : WikiProject Estonia/Missing articles
Assess : Rate each tagged article by quality and importance to the WikiProject if it has not been done. (See Category:Unassessed Estonia articles)
Infobox : Add infoboxes to articles without it
Maintain : Portal:Estonia
Photo : Upload and/or add a photo to articles without it (See Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Estonia)
Stubs : Add info to stub-articles and check for start-class.

Russia: Technology & engineering / Science & education / Physical geography B‑class Top‑importance

	Russia portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Russia, a WikiProject dedicated to coverage of Russia on Wikipedia. To participate: Feel free to edit the article attached to this page, join up at the project page, or contribute to the project discussion.RussiaWikipedia:WikiProject RussiaTemplate:WikiProject RussiaRussia articles
B	This article has been given a rating which conflicts with the project-independent quality rating in the banner shell. Please resolve this conflict if possible.
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by the technology and engineering in Russia task force.
	This article is supported by the science and education in Russia task force.
	This article is supported by the physical geography of Russia task force.

Astronomy Mid‑importance

	Astronomy portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Astronomy, which collaborates on articles related to Astronomy on Wikipedia.AstronomyWikipedia:WikiProject AstronomyTemplate:WikiProject AstronomyAstronomy articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Struve or Bessel?[edit]

It is hard to accept, as the article appears to, that Struve was anticipated by Bessel in the measurement of stellar parallax. Rather--I forbear from providing the footnoted dates--Struve's preliminary announcement of the parallax of alpha Lyrae inspired Bessel to come out with a better-documented (NOT more accurate) parallax for 61 Cygni some months later.

Simply put, Struve was the first to measure stellar parallax.

Most authoritative sources give Bessel credit as the first.

Some say that Thomas Henderson got his results for Alpha Centauri early, but didn't have the confidence to publish them. According to seds.org, Struve's result was less accurate than Bessel's [1]. Not surprising, since Vega is much farther away than 61 Cygni so the parallax is harder to measure to the same percentage accuracy.

Bessel was the first to publish an acceptably accurate non-preliminary result (within 10%), and for this reason he is usually given credit as the first. But most sources mention Struve and Henderson's parallel efforts in passing.

One source seems to say that Struve had a preliminary result that was surprisingly accurate, but then published a final result that was quite a bit off. [2]

Question about this: The Vega page and this page are contradictory about this. On the Vega page it says:

"The distance to Vega can be determined by measuring its parallax shift against the background stars as the Earth orbits the Sun. The first person to publish a star's parallax was Friedrich G. W. von Struve, when he announced a value of 0.125 arcseconds (0.125″) for Vega. Friedrich Bessel was skeptical about Struve's data, and, when Bessel published a parallax of 0.314″ for the star system 61 Cygni, Struve revised his value for Vega's parallax to nearly double the original estimate. This change cast further doubt on Struve's data. Thus most astronomers at the time, including Struve, credited Bessel with the first published parallax result. However, Struve's initial result was actually close to the currently accepted value of 0.129″, as determined by the Hipparcos astrometry satellite."

Is this discrepancy real, because historians of science really do not know. Or is there an answer? Either way, this page should probably say so. If anyone out there knows, especially if you have a nice reference, it would be a small edit to make this clear. It is a really interesting story! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jwkeohane (talk • contribs) 17:43, 4 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

-- Curps 03:34, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Nationality of Struve[edit]

While Struve lived and worked long time in Tartu/Dorpat and Pulkovo, his nationality is definitely ethnic german. In the factbox of the article his nationality is claimed to baltic german, but that is incorrect. Most probably the cited author did not made the difference or just described Struve's scientific work together real baltic german (i.e. originating from Estonian-Latvian-Lithuanian region) researchers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tonisee (talk • contribs) 12:24, 17 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]