Ross 614 - History

History

The primary star was discovered in 1927 by F. E. Ross using the 40 in (100 cm) refractor telescope at the Yerkes Observatory. He noticed the high proper motion of this dim 11th magnitude star in his second-epoch plates that were part of an astronomical survey started by E. E. Barnard, his predecessor at the observatory. Ross then included this new star in his eponymous catalog along with many others he discovered.
The first detection of a binary system was in 1936 by Dirk Reuyl using the 26-in refractor telescope of the McCormick Observatory at the University of Virginia using astrometric analysis of photographic plates. In 1951 Sarah L. Lippincott made the first reasonably accurate predictions of the position of the secondary star using the 24 in (61 cm) refractor telescope of the Sproul Observatory. These calculations were used by Walter Baade to find and optically resolve this binary system for the first time using the then new 5 m (200 in) Hale Telescope at the Palomar Observatory in California.