Andrew Cooper
Aug 15, 2023    Waikoloa, HI (map)
20cm f/6 Newtonian, Cave Astrola @ 76x
Seeing: 6 Transparency: 7 Moon: 0%

Brilliant white, no companion noted

Captain William Henry Smyth
Aug 22, 1834    No. 6 The Crescent, Bedford, England (map)
150mm f/17.6 refractor by Tully 1827

A STANDARD Greenwich star, with a minute companion. A 1, bright white; B 11, purplish. According to my adopted plan, A is assumed as a first magnitude star from Piazzi; though otherwise it would have been rated only as a second, which is the size assigned to it by Ptolemy, who probably copied it from the Catasterisms of Hipparchus. B did not escape the vigilance of Sir William Herschel, who classed the object 32 v. with these results:

    Pos. 259°23'  Dist. 55".53  Ep. 1781.56

The next micrometrical observations, are those of the Rev. Mr. Dawes, who managed to obtain them with a five-foot achromatic, of 3¾ inches aperture, and kindly forwarded them to me.

    Pos. 264°10'  Dist. 66".57  Ep. 1830.68

On a comparison of all the measures previous to my observations, the increase of angle and distance in this object may be charged to the sf movements of the large individual in RA and Dec., with an allowance for errors of operation in so difficult a star. The amount of the proper motions has been thus valued:

    P....  RA +0".14  Dec. -0".21
    B....     +0".19       -0".13
    A....     +0".16       -0".15
   [Hipparcos +0".13746    -0".16344]

The extensive northern constellation of which this star is now the lucida, was one of the old 48 asterisms, and its components, as optical means advanced, have been thus registered:

    Ptolemy   . . . 23 stars    Hevelius . . . . 47 stars
    Bulialdus . . . 26          Flamsteed  . . . 66
    Bayer     . . . 27          Bode   . . . . . 226

Andromeda is conspicuously figured near her father, mother, and lover, in the bonds which Aratus says she carried to Heaven; and has been also designated Virgo devoid, Mulier catenata, and Persea; while Schickard, on the part of the Mosaicists, claimed her as Abigail, The Arabians, whose tenets prohibited their drawing the human figure, represented her as a sea-calf: but the principal star was called Sirrah, and Alpherat, from Sirrat-al faras, the horse's navel, it having for- merly been quartered on Pegasus, whence it was taken to decorate the tresses of the lady. Ulugh Beigh calls it Rás-al-marat al muselselah, the head of the woman in bonds.

Warm imaginations perceive a resemblance to chains, by drawing the eye from 51 and 54 of Flamsteed, on the lady's left foot, over χ between the feet, to τ on the right calf; and from Alamak on the right foot, through χ and ξ to φ on the left knee. Owing to the derangements which the inadvertence or ignorance of the celestial map-makers have occasioned, there is no little confusion in this particular, for Flamsteed's Nos. 51 and 54 Andromedse, are φ and ν Persei, though placed exactly where Ptolemy wished them to be on the lady's foot: so also α in this asterism has been lettered δ Pegasi by Bayer, and β has been the lucida of the Northern Fish.

Several members of this configuration have been placed among the stellæ versatiles, whose brightness varies; first by Mr. Pigott, in the Philosophical Transactions for 1786, and next by Sir William Herschel, in the same work for 1797 They were also reviewed carefully by Harding and Westphal.

Sirrah is useful in alignment, or the mode of finding from a few stars with which a spectator is familiar, others which are unknown to him. Thus, an imaginary line drawn from the belt of Orion, which all the world knows or ought to know, through Aries, will lead to the head of Andromeda. Certain brackish rhymes then state:

And on, from where the pinion'd maid,
Her cruel fate attends,
Wide o'er the heavens his fabled form
Wing'd Pegasus extends.
From Alpherat down to Markab's beams,
Let a cross line be sent,
Then will four stars, upon the horse,
A spacious square present.

Of this notable square, Alpherat and Scheat form the northern side, while Markab and Algenib mark the southern; and these are useful in extending' the alignment to other sought objects.

― A Cycle of Celestial Objects Vol II, The Bedford Catalogue, William Henry Smyth, 1844

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