Saturday, June 15, 2024

Southwest of εCorBor

T Coronae-Ariadne would be very close indeed to the ε in that constellation. One Reverend John Flamsteed spent his life compiling a catalogue of boreal stars. Luckily (for us), Newton and Halley pirated his work in 1712. That's just six years after 1706.

Even more luckily, Flamsteed couldn't suppress all the copies. Here's one. Corona Borealis makes a small section of page 30. Flamsteed noted anything magnitudes down to 7 (lower=brighter). Flamsteed should have seen a mag-2 nova then. Further south he'd logged "34 Tauri" which we're now calling Uranus.

So let's hunt a nova. ε=Flamsteed's #14 is distance 62°12' from the north pole. This nova would be around 62°50' like γ and δ out east. Next up: west, of 236°11' R.A. I assume just east of ρ or ι, so at 237°.

Aaaand there we go. The catalog is sorted by RA. There is simply nothing there. I guess it would be "15 CB" if he'd notched it, displacing ι.

It may be that Flamsteed did see the thing but notched it in other notes, not in what Newton and Halley stole from him.

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