of for the pair. Claims of a planetary system On different occasions, it has been claimed that 61 Cygni might have unseen low-mass companions, planets or a brown dwarf. Kaj Strand of the Sproul Observatory, under the direction of Peter van de Kamp, made the first such claim in 1942 using observations to detect tiny but systematic variations in the orbital motions of 61 Cygni A and B. These perturbations suggested that a third body of about 16 Jupiter masses must be orbiting 61 Cygni A. Reports of this third body served as inspiration for Hal Clement's 1953 science fiction novel Mission of Gravity. In 1957, van de Kamp narrowed his uncertainties, claiming that the object had a mass of eight times that of Jupiter, a calculated orbital period of 4.8 years, and a semi-major axis of 2.4 AU, where 1 AU is the average distance from the Earth to the Sun. In 1977, Soviet astronomers at the Pulkovo Observatory near Saint Petersburg suggested that the system included three planets: two giant planets with six and twelve Jupiter masses around 61 Cyg A, and one giant planet with seven Jupiter masses around 61 Cygni B. In 1978, Wulff-Dieter Heintz of the Sproul Observatory proved that these claims were spurious, as they were unable to detect any evidence of such motion down to six percent of the Sun's mass—equivalent to about 60 times the mass of Jupiter. In 2018, analysis of the Gaia (spacecraft) second data release (DR2) revealed significant proper motion anomalies in the orbits of the binary stars around each other; the stars were not quite orbiting around their centre of mass with 61 Cygni B also orbiting too slowly for its assumed mass. These anomalies taken together are indicative of the possible presence of a perturbing third object in orbit around 61 Cygni B. The habitable zone for 61 Cygni A, defined as the locations where liquid water could be present on an Earth-like planet, is 0.26–0.58 AU. For 61 Cygni B, the habitable zone is 0.24–0.50 AU. Refining planetary boundaries Since no certain planetary object has been detected around either star so far, McDonald Observatory team has set limits to the presence of one or more planets around 61 Cygni A and 61 Cygni B with masses between 0.07 and 2.1 Jupiter masses and average separations spanning between 0.05 and 5.2 AU. Because of the proximity of