Andrew Cooper
Nov 27, 2023    Waikoloa, HI (map)
28cm f/10 SCT, NexStar 11" GyPSy @ 127x
Seeing: 6 Transparency: 6 Moon: 0%

White, an 8th magnitude companion visible 1' northwest making an attractive wide double

Gaia EDR3 data for parallax and proper motions are comparable suggesting a physical association for this pair, while some distance outside the main cluster parallax matches the Hyades, likely outlying cluster members

Captain William Henry Smyth
Dec 6, 1832    No. 6 The Crescent, Bedford, England (map)
150mm f/17.6 refractor by Tully 1827

A star with a distant companion, in the right fore-leg of Taurus, being about 6° below Aldebaran, where it forms the vertex of an acute-angled triangle with that star and Bellatrix. A 5, bluish white; and B 8½, cerulean blue. Some minute stars follow A, and there is one of the 9th magnitude in the np quadrant. B is No. 127 of Piazzi's Hora IV., a deduction from whose mean places are given below; and the object forms 31 ♅. VI., discovered and registered in September, 1780; but it was not micrometrically measured till the operations of H and S. The comparison of the previous results to my own are thus:

    P.        Pos. 303°24'  Dist. 64".30  Ep. 1800.00
    H. and S.      298°59'        69".45      1822.88
   [WDS            300°           69".20      2017   ]

A discussion of all the observations leads to the inference—should they be tolerably correct in a metric sense—that the satellite will have reached the western limit of its orbit in about a century and a half; so that after the year of our Lord 2000, its distance from A will begin to decrease, since it will commence the southern half of its orbit.

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

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