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| | AAVSO: History Of Mira's Discovery |
 | | David Fabricius (1564_1617), an amateur astronomer and native of Friesland, The Netherlands, is recognized as the first to have discovered a long period variable in 1596, later called o (omicron) Ceti by Johann Bayer in 1603. |
 | | Fabricius (Wolf 1877) observed the star from August 3, when he had used it as a comparison star for the determination of the position of the planet he assumed to be Mercury (later identified by Argelander, 1869, as more probably Jupiter), until August 21, when it had increased from magnitude 3 to magnitude 2. |
 | | Fabricius, a minister, had been murdered by a peasant whom he had cited from the pulpit as having stolen one of the minister's geese (Poggendorff 1863)! |
| www.aavso.org /vstar/vsots/mirahistory.shtml (5999 words) |
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