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

Blue-white, several stars in close proximity but none are physically related, there is a companion but it is only 0.2" from the primary, actually the 3rd brightest star in Aries, but does not have a Bayer designation or even a proper name

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

A coarse quadruple star, in the south wing of the Fly, and forming its lucida. A 3, white; B 13, deep blue; C 11, lurid; D 9, pale grey. Of these two members A and C form 116 H V. under these measures:

    Pos. 188°12'  Dist. 39".37  Ep. 1782.98
   [WDS  235°           27".70      2014   ]

while A and D constitute 5 ♅ 6, thus measured by H. and S.:

    Pos. 226°36'  Dist. 127".55  Ep. 1821.96
   [WDS  237°           122".30      2014   ]

But since Sir William Herschel registered this object as 35 Arietis, and another error of identity occurred, it should be stated that A is 186 P. II., the Muscæ secundæ</a> of the Palermo Catalogue; and to which is assigned the following degree of proper motion, viz.:

    P....  RA +0".20  Dec. -0".14
    B....     +0".09       -0".10
   [Hipparcos +0".06681    -0".11652]

My friend the Rev. Mr. Dawes re-examined this object at my request in October, 1842, with results very similar to my own, —whence the difference between H. and myself in the angle of A and C must be only accidental. Piazzi's note 186 to Hora II., mentions a couple of distant companions—utraque 9æ magnit.—which, though too far off to be very interesting, may be thus reduced:

    1 Pos. 275°.6  Dist.  94"  Ep. 1800
    2      213°.5        146" 

Musca Borealis is a little asterism to the north-east of the Ram's head, and is known by three stars of the 3rd and 4th magnitudes. It seems to have been composed from informes</a> by Bartschius, the scientific son-in-law of Kepler; for which reason, perhaps, it was afterwards retained by Hevelius, though reluctantly. To identify the object here treated, let a line from Aldebaran be passed under the Pleiades and meet another carried from α Andromedæ over α Trianguli; it will pass Lucida Muscæ in the mid-distance.

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

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