ABSTRACT
On 13 August 1596, a Dutch amateur astronomer named David Fabricius was looking at the night sky when he saw a reasonably bright star in the constellation of Cetus, the Whale. He paid little attention to it - why should be? - but a few weeks later it had disappeared. For some reason or other he did not look for it again, and the next sighting came in 1603, when Johann Bayer was compiling a new star-map and giving the stars their Greek letters which we still use today. There was Fabricius' star, and Bayer gave it the letter Omicron, so that it became Omicron Ceti. Once more it vanished. Finally, in 1638, another Dutchman, Phocylides Holwarda, established that it appears and fades regularly; it was the first knmvn variable star. It reaches maximum
