Andrew Cooper
Nov 13, 2020    Waikoloa, HI (map)
20cm f/6 Newtonian, Cave Astrola @ 136x
Seeing: 5 Transparency: 6 Moon: 0%

Brilliant blue-white, a trio of 6-8 magnitude stars 2' northwest including 24 Tau, the brightest star in the Pleiades 6' west of the cluster center

Captain William Henry Smyth
Dec 21, 1836    No. 6 The Crescent, Bedford, England (map)
150mm f/17.6 refractor by Tully 1827

Alcyone, a Greenwich star, with a distant companion, in the midst of the Pleiades, called by the Arabians Jauza, the wall-nut, and Neyyir, bright, or lucida of the Pleiades. A 3, greenish yellow; B 7, pale white. Piazzi marked this "duplex," but the -comes could only be 151 P. III.; and a reduction from his mean apparent places, and the micrometrical measures of Sir J. South, afford these results :

    P. Pos. 288°00'  Dist. 122".50  Ep. 1800
    S.      288°42'        116".40      1824

which, considering that A is chargeable with a small proper motion both in RA and declination, is very consistent with more recent observations.

The other two small stars in the same, or np quadrant, form the "binæ ad boream" mentioned 150 P. III.; and were also measured by S. The proper motions alluded to, are thus valued:

    P....  RA -0".04  Dec. -0".09
    B....     +0".06       -0".05
   [Hipparcos +0".01934    -0".04367]

This star has usually been considered as the one described under the 32nd of Taurus, in Ptolemy, and there marked ε in brightness. But Mr. Baily says, "I do not think this star can be η Tauri, on account of its magnitude: yet it is singular that the brightest star in the Pleiades should not have been noticed by Ptolemy*."

[This entry of Alcyone goes on to decribe the Pleiades in general, this can be found in the record for M45]

* The occultations of this star, and h Pleiadum, by the dark limb of the Moon, were well observed on the 19th March, 1839, by my excellent friend Lord Chief Justice Tindal; who thus elegantly occupied the evening of a tedious assize-day at Bedford. The observations were made with the 8½-foot equatoreal, charged with an eye-piece magnifying ninety-three times.

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

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