Thread: star catalogues
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Old 12-10-2009, 02:18 PM
Enchilada
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Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Sydney, Australia
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Post List of Observer Designations

Quote:
Originally Posted by pvelez View Post
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
Here is an attached pdf list of the important observer pair designations….

As for Haas' really awful book, well…..

I would suggest you get "The Cambridge Double Star Atlas" * and "Observing and Measuring Visual Double Stars" by Bob Argyle and Robert W. Argyle. Useful Extract

* Extract to read (on-line) http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/c...1493437&ss=exc especially section "Discoverer/catalog/observatory designations"
Attached Files
File Type: pdf pairnames.pdf (52.5 KB, 58 views)

Last edited by Enchilada; 12-10-2009 at 02:19 PM. Reason: forgot de attachment!
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