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

Blue-white, no companion noted

Smyth notes this star as pale yellow?? It is a B9 / A1 spectroscopic binary, quite blue!

WDS lists three companions, B a 9.9 magnitude 20" @ 248° and C a 12.6 magnitude 101" @ 298 both reported by John Hershel and both background stars with negligable proper motion, a third D was added by van den Bos in 1962 is also a background star as shown by Gaia EDR3 data

Captain William Henry Smyth
Apr 9, 1835    No. 6 The Crescent, Bedford, England (map)
150mm f/17.6 refractor by Tully 1827

A wide double star in the fore part of Hydra's neck. A 4½, pale yellow; B 12, ash-coloured. This difficult object is 54 ♅. V., who gave no measure, but remarked that the stars were excessively unequal; and that the small one, "a point," was about 75° sf, and nearly a minute distant. The assigned proper motion to A has been:

    P....  RA +0".10  Dec. -0".37
    B....     +0".20       -0".32
    A....     +0".15       -0".33
   [Gaia EDR3 +0".134386   -0".322143]

This star, with δ, ε, η, ξ, ω, and σ, the first seven of the Water-serpent, are termed by the Arabians min el-a'zal, of the unarmed. It will be met from the west by a line drawn from Betelgeuze through Procyon, till it meets another from the north-east, running from δ Leonis through Regulus. The point of intersection is visible enough.

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

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