History
Proper motion was suspected by early astronomers (according to Macrobius, AD 400) but proof was provided in 1718 by Edmund Halley, who noticed that Sirius, Arcturus and Aldebaran were over half a degree away from the positions charted by the ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus roughly 1850 years earlier.
The term "proper motion" derives from the historical use of "proper" to mean "belonging to" (cf, propre in French and the common English word property). There is no such thing as "improper motion" in astronomy.
Read more about this topic: Proper Motion
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The true theater of history is therefore the temperate zone.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“The whole history of civilisation is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“It’s not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)