Andrew Cooper
Feb 20, 2022    Waikoloa, HI (map)
20cm f/6 Newtonian, Cave Astrola @ 76x
Seeing: 7 Transparency: 7 Moon: 0%

Brilliant white, the 11th magnitude star visible 3' northeast is a listed companion, non-visual binary

Hipparcos data reveals the 10.8 magnitude companion observed above, listed as B in WDS, to be a background star

Captain William Henry Smyth
Sep 13, 1837    No. 6 The Crescent, Bedford, England (map)
150mm f/17.6 refractor by Tully 1827

A bright star with a distant companion, on the Waggoners left shoulder. A 2, lucid yellow; B 10½, bluish. This object forms 88 ♅. VI., and was thus measured:

    Pos. 35° 48' Dist. 169".10 Ep. 1782.23

As a discussion arose upon this difference in the distance, I requested Mr. Challis to try it with the great Northumberland equatoreal, with which he kindly complied; and the following results constitute the last epoch:

    Pos. 37° 56' Dist. 183".45 Ep. 1841.96
   [WDS  42°           187".2      2011   ]

This fine star familiarly known as Menkalinan, from the Arabic Menkib-dhi-l'inán, the rein-holder's shoulder—lost much of its importance on being rejected from the Greenwich Catalogue in 1830. It may be picked up by projecting an imaginary line from the Præsepe, in Cancer, through Castor, which is nearly half-way: or a ray from Rigel through Bellatrix, led rather more than three times as far to the north, hits it. Our friend the galley-rhymester submits a third alineation, thus:

    From the Pole-star direct a glance,   with Betelgeuze to mix,
    About mid-distance, near the Goat,    Menkalinan you'll fix:
    And there behold how neat it forms    with Capra bright a base,
    While delta as a vertex stands,       the triangle to grace.

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

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