Andrew Cooper
Feb 25, 2020    Waikoloa, HI (map)
20cm f/6 Newtonian, Cave Astrola @ 61x
Seeing: 7 Transparency: 7 Moon: 0%

White with a faint 9.8 magnitude companion 28" north, one field west of 41Ari

Captain William Henry Smyth
Oct 5, 1837    No. 6 The Crescent, Bedford, England (map)
150mm f/17.6 refractor by Tully 1827

A fine double star, over the back of Aries, but in the space assigned to Musca; lying nearly mid-way between the Pleiades and β Andromedæ. A 6, pale topaz; B 9, light blue. This easy object is H IV 5, and was thus registered :

Pos. 2°46' Dist. 25".53 Ep. 1779.74

Forty-three years afterwards, H. and S. found it :

    Pos. 1°40'  Dist. 29".185  Ep. 1822.08
        [1°           28".60       2013 WDS]

whence, compared with my own very satisfactory results, there may exist a slow motion in orbit. But the inference that the stars are receding from each other, cannot be supported, as William Herschel marked his distance "inaccurate." The proper motions of A are:

    P.... RA +0".21  Dec. -0".09
    B....    +0".14       +0".01
   [Gaia DR2 +0".064799   -0".028331]

[Musca Borealis, or the northern fly, was a constellation just southeast of Triangulum that was later incorporated into Aries. The body of this little fly was made up of the stars 33 Ari, 35 Ari, 39 Ari, and 41 Ari.]

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

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