Andrew Cooper
Feb 5, 2022    Waikoloa, HI (map)
20cm f/6 Newtonian, Cave Astrola @ 76x
Seeing: 5 Transparency: 6 Moon: 28%

Brilliant blue-white, no companion noted, non-visual binary

Captain William Henry Smyth
Aug 25, 1836    No. 6 The Crescent, Bedford, England (map)
150mm f/17.6 refractor by Tully 1827

A standard Greenwich star, with a distant companion, and three other small stars in the field, forming a regular figure with the two preceding and two following β.

A 2, brilliant white; B 10, pale grey. This object, β, is on the very tip of the horn of Taurus, and therefore at the greatest distance from the hoof: can this have given rise to the otherwise pointless sarcasm, of not knowing B from a bull's foot? This position gained it the name of Nath, from Al-nátih, the butting; and as it is also in the Waggoner's left ancle, it was called Kab'dhí-l-'inán, i. e., heel of the rein-holder, and entered on several Catalogues as γ Aurigae. The proper motion assigned to this star—small as it is—may be stated:

    P....  RA -0".03  Dec. -0".17
    B....     +0".12       -0".19
    A....     -0".08       -0".20
   [Hipparcos +0".02276    -0".17358]

In finding Nath by alignment, it must be sought about half-way between the Pleiades and Pollux; or, following the poet's dogma, a line sent

From centre of Orion's belt
to where Capella's seen,
Will point to the observant eye
Nath in mid-way between.

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

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