[pvelez (Pete)]

Am I the only person to be confused by all the different names for stars?

I'm doing an observation project on double stars at the moment and I've been trawling through the Sissy Haas text Double Stars for Small Telescopes. The book refers to the names of the stars - but then uses a number of different systems to identify them.

Some are easy - alpha [Constellation] and 4 [Constellation] are fairly straightfoward.

Then it gets tricky.

I have stars numbered with a capital sigma (I think) [number]. What is this?

Then there are stars with a capital S [number]. I assume this is a Struve number - is this correct?

And then there are stars maked h [number].

When I try to match these with Starry Night, I can find stars using their HIP number but not much else.

Is there simple way that I can determine the various names of a star so that I can correlate my text with SN? I expect there is a website somewhere that does this but I'm scratching my noggin at the moment.

Any tips would be gratefully received

Pete