HD 41742 and HD 41700
star in the constellation Puppis
HD 41742 and HD 41700 is a star system that lies approximately 88 light-years away in the constellation of Puppis. The system consists of two bright stars where the primary is orbited by two fainter stars, making it a quadruple with an unequal hierarchy.
The fainter star HD 41700 was designated Rho Columbae (ρ Col) by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille before Francis Baily included it in Puppis and leaving it undesignated.
Component discovery
HD 41742 B was discovered early on in the history of visual binaries, due to the brightness of the primary. The earliest measurement in the Washington Double Star Catalog (WDS) dates to 1837 and was made by William Herschel, stating a position angle of 246° and a separation of 1.1" for the companion. Surprisingly, recent measures suggest that the secondary has moved significantly over the two centuries since, with it lying at a position angle of around 215° and a separation increasing between 5.30" in the late 1970s to 5.95" in 2010. This translates to a minimum change in physical separation between 142 and 159 AU over 35 years, which suggests that HD 41742 B is moving quickly away from the primary.
Lying at a considerably wider separation, HD 41700 was first observed relative to HD 41742 later than the tighter binary, despite being much brighter. The first measurement in the WDS dates to 1854 and was again made by Herschel, giving a position angle of 320° and a separation of 174". More recent values agree on the position angle, but suggest a separation closer to 200".
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “HD 41742 and HD 41700” as star in the constellation Puppis. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as star in the constellation Puppis. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q83796076. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1837, 2010 and 1854.
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This entry incorporates text from “HD 41742 and HD 41700” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.