Closing Remarks

Extract

Several things are clear from this Joint Discussion. Interest in this type of work is wide and could be wider. The subject touches on an immense range of topics from geodesy and celestial mechanics to astrophysics. Observations at different observatories do not conflict with each other, but rather reinforce one another. This is true of timings, but still more true of observations of binary stars and of stars with perceptible angular diameters. There is no real difficulty in identifying as double a wide pair with a separation of the order of 0˝.01. Duplicate observations from different places are necessary if we are to infer the conventional parameters of position angle and separation for a given pair. Duplicate observations are still more essential in cases explainable as close pairs with separations less than 0˝.01.