Transcription: This is what brought Herschel round to the study of double stars. In 1782, he published a catalogue of 282 doubles and two years later added another 414 pairs. John Mitchell used this material to demonstrate that the existence of such large numbers of close pairs could not be due to mere coincidence. Of course, if the two components of a double star lay at the same distance from us, their parallax shifts would be the same and they could not be used to measure star distances. File Comment Made in Intimate Arts
(.mp3)