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astronomer who made an accurate determination of the constant of precession.
He discovered about 500 double stars. Struve was born in Dorpat (now Tartu), Estonia, studied there, and worked at the Pulkovo Observatory, near St Petersburg, from 1839. From 1847 to 1862 he was also a military adviser in St Petersburg. In 1862 he succeeded his father Wilhelm von Struve as director of the observatory. Struve studied Saturn's rings, discovered a satellite of Uranus, and calculated the mass of Neptune. He also concerned himself with the measurement of stellar parallax, the movement of the Sun through space, and the structure of the universe, although he was among those astronomers who erroneously believed our Galaxy to be the extent of the whole universe. |