Discovery of Sirius B
Descubrimiento de Sirius B
- Date
- 1862 · confidence high
- Place
- Alvan Clark & Sons workshop, Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, United States
- Credited to
- Alvan Graham Clark
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
While testing a new refracting telescope bound for Dearborn Observatory, Clark spotted the faint companion of Sirius that Bessel had predicted eighteen years earlier from the star's wobble: the first observational confirmation of a collapsed, extraordinarily dense star.
It was the second white dwarf observed, after 40 Eridani B (catalogued since 1783 without being recognized as such); it was identified because Bessel had predicted an invisible companion of Sirius in 1844 from orbital perturbations.
What it led to
- Observational confirmation of the invisible companion of Sirius predicted by Bessel
- Recognition of a new, extremely dense class of stellar object
- Path toward the quantum physics of electron degeneracy