Andrew Cooper
Oct 13, 2024    Waikoloa, HI (map)
20cm f/6 Newtonian, Cave Astrola @ 136x
Seeing: 7 Transparency: 6 Moon: 0%

White, a 10th magnitude companion is visible 11" southwest in rich galactic starfield

Captain William Henry Smyth
Nov 21, 1833    No. 6 The Crescent, Bedford, England (map)
150mm f/17.6 refractor by Tully 1827

A most delicate double star, in the Unicorn's eye. A 6, yellowish white; B16, dusky. This is indeed a difficult object, B being the minimum visibile of my instrument, and with it only seen by such transient glimpses, that but for a distant pale lOth-magnitude star in the sp quadrant, nearly in the same line of bearing, my estimations must have been much wider. There is also a dusky 12th star in the sf, at about 100" from A; so that the whole forms a wide quadruple object. It is nearly mid-way between Procyon and the three little stars which form Orion's head—and also of a line passed from Castor to α Leporis—in the middle of the Milky Way.

About 2' preceding, and 40' south of this, is a sprinkle of brilliant stars, registered 2 ♅. VII. in 1784, and described as tracing "winding lines around 12 Monocerotis." [This is NGC2244 the Rosette Nebula Cluster]

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