Andrew Cooper
Nov 7, 2020    Waikoloa, HI (map)
20cm f/6 Newtonian, Cave Astrola @ 76x
Seeing: 6 Transparency: 6 Moon: 0%

Brilliant blue-white, no companion noted

Captain William Henry Smyth
Jan 26, 1835    No. 6 The Crescent, Bedford, England (map)
150mm f/17.6 refractor by Tully 1827

A standard Greenwich star, with a distant companion. A 2½ white; B 13, pale blue, with a small comes in the sp, a line from B carried through A, leads to two small stars in the sf quadrant.

In Tycho Brahe's catalogue this is erroneously placed in the constellation Pisces; but it is on the extreme of the wing of Pegasus, whence it obtained the name of Algenib, from the Arabic Jenáh-al-faras, the horse's wing.

A comparison of the distance between this star and Regulus, by ancient and modern astronomers, shows Ptolemy to be out -12'18".

To find this star by alignment, lead a line from the Pleiades through Aries, or look about 14 degrees south of Alpherat, where it will be identified by its lustre. With α Andromedae it forms the twenty-seventh of the Mansions of the Moon, under the designation of Alfargu, from the Arabian Al farigh al-muäkhker, the hindmost loiterer.

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

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