Andrew Cooper
Mar 22, 2020    Waikoloa, HI (map)
20cm f/6 Newtonian, Cave Astrola @ 61x
Seeing: 7 Transparency: 6 Moon: 0%

Brilliant blue-white, no companion noted

Captain William Henry Smyth
Jan 4, 1834    No. 6 The Crescent, Bedford, England (map)
150mm f/17.6 refractor by Tully 1827

A Greenwich star of 1830, with a distant companion, on the body of Lepus. A 3½, pale yellow; B 9½, grey; a bright 6th magnitude in the np quadrant. This object is easily found by alignment; for a ray carried from ε, the central star of Orion's belt, through θ and its nebulous patch on the sword, as low down as Sirius, falls upon α Leporis; it is thus recorded in galley-rhymes:

Orion's image, on the south,
has four stars small but fair;
Their figure quadrilateral
points out the timid Hare.

This asterism is one of the old 48, and is said to have been placed immediately below Orion, as emblematic of caution and celerity. The Arabians called α, Arneb, from al-arneb, the hare; it was also, in conjunction with β, γ, and δ, named Kursa, from Kursá-l-jaúzá, or 'Arsh-al-jaúzá, the giant's chair or throne,—for al-jaúzá, the belted-sheep, seems to be here used as the proper name of the giant. 'Abdr rahmán Súfí designates the throne—one of the many which the Arabs had in their heavens, although a squatting rather than a sitting people—al-muakhkherah, the succeeding, as following that formed by λ, β, ψ Eridani, and τ Orionis. Ideler mentions its having this name, and angrily adds, "und Gott weiss wie sonst noch."

It is a poorish constellation—if such a term may be applied to those wondrous assemblages—and has been thus registered:

    Ptolemy  . . . 12 stars  Hevelius  . . . 16 stars
    TychoBrahé . . 13        Flamsteed . . . 19
    Bayer  . . . . 14        Bode    . . . . 66

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

Drawings, descriptions, and CCD photos are copyright Andrew Cooper unless otherwise noted, no usage without permission.

A complete list of credits and sources can be found on the about page