Van Biesbroeck's Star Catalog

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In 1961 the astronomer George Van Biesbroeck published a catalog of low luminosity stars discovered using the 82 in (2.1 m) Otto Struve refractor telescope of the McDonald Observatory in Texas. This survey is similar to earlier dim star surveys that were done by Max Wolf and Frank Elmore Ross but using later equipment and techniques that could detect even fainter stars. The stars in this catalog are all low luminosity stars that appear near known high proper motion stars in the telescope's field of view. The high proper motion indicates that the stars are close enough to Earth for a dim star to be seen with a large telescope. Presuming that these high proper motion stars might be binary stars with dim, previously undetected, companions. He took astrophotographs of the space around these stars looking for low luminosity stars that shared the high proper motions of the primary star. In general, the primary stars were too dim for a direct measurement of their distance by measuring their parallax at that time.