~4th Century BC    Chinese astronomers Shi Shen and Gan De create the world's first catalog of stars.

~150 AD   Claudius Ptolemy publishes a comprehensive catalog of stars in his influential work, Almagest.  It catalogued over 1,022 stars visible from Alexadria.

1718   Edmund Halley discovers that stars change their positions over time.  He discovers this by comparing his own observations with measurements taken in antiquity.

1782   Dutch astronomer John Goodricke observes that variations in the brightness of the star Algol are periodic, and suggests that these variations are due to the presence of a nearby star.

1784   Astronomer Edward Piggot discovers the first Cepheid variable star.

1844   Friedrich Struve, Thomas Henderson, and Friedrich Bessel are the first to create detailed measurements of stellar parallaxes

1918   The Henry Draper Catalogue of stars is published.  It included all stars down to about the ninth or tenth magnitude.

1924   Arthur Eddington discovers the mass-luminosity relation of stars.

1929   George Gamow proposes that hydrogen fusion is the energy source for stars.

1963   William Fowler and Fred Hoyle introduce the concept of supermassive stars.

1966   The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Star Catalog is published.