It took until 1838 to measure the distance to any star besides the sun

For centuries, astronomers couldn't detect any star shifting position as Earth orbited the sun, which some took as evidence Earth didn't move at all — the shift was just too tiny to see. In 1838 Friedrich Bessel finally measured that shift for the star 61 Cygni, pinning its distance at about 10 light-years and giving astronomy its first real ruler for the universe.

— Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, On the parallax of 61 Cygni — Astronomische Nachrichten, 1838