Star Tales – Leo Minor

A lion cub accompanying Leo, introduced by the Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius in 1687. He formed it from faint stars between Ursa Major and Leo that were not previously part of any constellation. The brightest stars of Leo Minor are of only fourth magnitude and there are no legends associated with it.

Leo Minor, the lion cub, lies immediately above the head of Leo itself. From the Uranographia of Johann Bode. For Hevelius’s original depiction, see here.

Curiously, Leo Minor has no star labelled Alpha, although there is a Beta Leonis Minoris. This seems to have resulted from an oversight on the part of the 19th-century English astronomer Francis Baily. Hevelius did not label the stars in any of his newly formed constellations, so 150 years later Baily did it for him. In his British Association Catalogue of 1845, Baily assigned the letter Beta to the second-brightest star in Leo Minor, but left the brightest star (46 Leonis Minoris) unlettered by mistake.

There is further confusion, too. In his book Star Names, Their Lore and Meaning, R. H. Allen says that Hevelius described the brightest star in Leo Minor as Praecipua, meaning ‘chief’, which was later used as a star name by Piazzi in his Palermo Catalogue. However, I am unable to find any such mention of “Praecipua” in Hevelius’s catalogue. What’s more, the American historian Morton Wagman has pointed out to me that the star which Piazzi named Praecipua was not, in fact, the brightest. In his Palermo Catalogue of 1814, Piazzi gave the name to 37 LMi, having wrongly assessed it as brighter than 46 LMi. Allen says that Piazzi gave the name Praecipua to 46 LMi, but he is wrong.