Andrew Cooper
Mar 24, 2020    Waikoloa, HI (map)
20cm f/6 Newtonian, Cave Astrola @ 61x
Seeing: 5 Transparency: 7 Moon: 0%

A pretty binary, actually a trinary but B&C not split tonight, blue-white, near matched in magnitude

Captain William Henry Smyth
Jan 8, 1834    No. 6 The Crescent, Bedford, England (map)
150mm f/17.6 refractor by Tully 1827

A fine triple star, in the Unicorn's right fore-leg: a ray shot from the Bull's eye through Bellatrix, and extended rather more than as far again into the south-east, will pick it up in the out-cropping of the Milky Way. A 6½, white; B 7, and C 8, both pale white. Two constituents of this object appear bracketted in Piazzi's Catalogue as double Nos. 121 and 122, Hora VI. the stars he saw and determined being A and B; and about 250" away in the np quadrant, at an angle of 340°, is the little star alluded to in the Palermo Catalogue "alia 8æ magnit. præcedit ad boream." Sir William Herschel, who discovered it in 1781, classed it a "curious treble star," pronouncing it to be "one of the most beautiful sights in the heavens;" but the next observers, his son and Sir James South, registered it quadruple. This is 10 ♅. I. and 17 ♅. II.; 71 of H. and S.; and 919 of Σ.; and the several measures are so coincident, on comparison—notwithstanding the nearness of magnitudes creates an anomaly of quadrants—as to prove the general fixity of the individuals. But a slight degree of proper motion is imputed to A, of the following varying values:

P.... RA -0".06 Dec. -0".12
B.... +0".06 +0".05
[Hipparcos -0".00686 -0".00276]

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

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