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Which stars did Edmond Halley correctly identify as having proper motion?
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Edmond Halley
Edmond Halley, detail of an oil painting by Richard Phillips, c. 1720; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
In 1718, the English astronomer Edmond Halley became the first to detect proper motion by comparing contemporary star positions with those recorded in the ancient Almagest by Ptolemy. He correctly identified that the stars Arcturus and Sirius had shifted their positions relative to their neighbors over time.12
While Halley also announced proper motions for Aldebaran and Betelgeuse, these identifications were incorrect; he was misled in those instances by errors present in the ancient star data he used for comparison.2