Andrew Cooper
Aug 20, 2021    Waikoloa, HI (map)
20cm f/6 Newtonian, Cave Astrola @ 76x
Seeing: 6 Transparency: 6 Moon: 0%

Pale yellow, an 11th magnitude 2" companion not visible, a 1' trio of 13-14 magnitude stars 5' southeast could be mistaken for a galaxy at first glance

Captain William Henry Smyth
Oct 1, 1836    No. 6 The Crescent, Bedford, England (map)
150mm f/17.6 refractor by Tully 1827

A most delicate double star, on the tip of the cameleon-like tongue with which the celestial Whale is often figured; and it will be struck by a line thrown from α Arietis, in the Ram's head, through α Ceti, and carried about 6½° beyond. A 5½, pale cream-colour; B 16, dusky.

This object was discovered by Sir John Herschel, and is No. 663 of his Third Series of Twenty-foot Sweeps, where the acolyte is registered of the 19th magnitude. But as, after several toilful trials under the best circumstances, I caught a view which, though most evanescent, and under an averted eye, was sufficient to catch a guess by, I have assigned its brightness at the point which is fixed upon as the minimum visibile of my telescope. It must, however, be esteemed among the intensiva of faintness, and has been repeatedly sought in vain, with the same instrument.

Reasoning from the analogies presented by optical space-penetrating power, this acolyte, if not physically connected with A, must be almost inconceivably beyond it in the vast profundity of those remote regions which may be but the beginning of the Universe: such argument suggests the possible distance to be somewhere between 700 and 800 times that of Sirius from us.

[WDS lists this B companion at PA 197° 2.2" and 11.0 magnitude epoch 2015, Gaia DR2 data shows this to be a physical companion with comparable parallax and also sharing the high proper motion of 94 Cet]

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

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