The Spirit of 33: "Nutcracker I" Project 

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There are quite a few rapidly moving pairs in the sky, and Gamma Virginis is one of them. It is coming up to its most dramatic phase in the next few years. It will be well worth watching, but don't expect too much. At the last perhelion, in the early XIX Century, no telescope in the world was able to split the pair.  Only the great Dorpat 9.3" refractor could even elongate it. There are bigger telescopes around these days of course, but it is going to be an extremely difficult target. I don't know its present separation, but last year (2000) it was certainly far closer than 1.8" and it has closed a good deal since then.

In his book "A Handbook of Double Stars" Crossley devotes 5 pages to this double and its perihelion in 1836. He quotes what Sir John Herschel said in regards to the orbital elements that he calculated: "If they be correct, the latter end of the year 1833, or the beginning of the year 1834, will witness one of the most striking phenomena which siderial astronomy has yet afforded; the perihelion passage of one star around another, with the immense angular velocity of berween 60 and 70 degrees per annum, that is to say, of a degree every five days. As the two stars will then, however, be within little more than half a second of each other, and as they are both large and nearly equal, none but the very finest telescopes will have any chance of showing this magnificent phenomenon."

The Following two entry clasification table represents aperture of the used telescopes to observe this star and dates of observation. The codes used are explained below.
 
 

OS: Observed as Single
SE: Slight Elongation
CE: Clear Elongation
EF: Eight Figure
THBC: Thinniest Hair Between Components
CS: Clearly Split

(text from PJ Anway and Tom Teague)