[2] A study by George Gatewood in 2003 using older sources along with data from the Hipparcos satellite yielded an orbital period of about 16.6 years and a semi-major axis separation of about 1.1 arc seconds (2.4–5.3 AU).

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.

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.

[10] 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.

[11] 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.