Bayer designation
Many of the brighter stars are given names which are known as Bayer designations. These designations, which were introduced by Johann Bayer in his star atlas Uranometria in 1603, consist of a Greek letter followed by the genitive of the name of the constellation in which the star lies. In principle, the brightest star of the constellation should be given the designation Alpha, the next brightest Beta, and so on. In practice, there are numerous examples where the designations are out of order, and there are even cases where a star has a designation for a constellation in which it doesn't lie (according to the modern constellation boundaries). Two stars have double designations, β Tau (γ Aur) and α And (δ Peg). Nonetheless, these designations have proved useful and are widely used today.
There are two common ways in which Bayer designations can be written. The designation can be written out in full, as in Alpha Canis Majoris or Beta Persei, or a lowercase Greek letter can be used together with the standard 3-letter abbreviation of the constellation, as in α CMa or β Per.
Although most common Bayer letters are Greek, it should also be mentioned that the system was extended, first by using lowercase Latin letters, and then by using uppercase Latin letters. Most of these are little used, but there are some exceptions such as h Persei (which is actually a star cluster) and P Cygni. Note that uppercase Latin Bayer designations never went beyond Q, and names such as W Virginis are variable designations, not Bayer designations.
A further complication is the use of numeric superscripts to distinguish between stars with the same Bayer letter. Usually these are double stars (mostly optical doubles rather than true binary stars), but there are some exceptions such as the chain of stars π1, π2, π3, π4, π5 and π6 Orionis.
See also Flamsteed designation and star designations.
to an abandoned sawmill round there somewhere. The windows were boarded up.
to make sure; then Dave pulled a couple of boards off a window and looked in:
Dave pulled off some more boards, put.html">put his arm in through a broken pane,
I handed in the swags to him. The room.html">room was very draughty;
so we tried the partitioned-off room -- the bedroom -- and that was better.
by some timber-getters or other Bush contractors who'd camped there last;
and put the billy on. We unrolled our swags and spread the blankets
to dry. There was plenty in our tucker-bags, so we had a good feed.
like an ill-used fibre brush -- a beard that got redder the longer it grew;
so easy-going about the expression and so scared about the head),
a weird pair as we sat there, naked, on the low three-legged stools,
and ate our bread and meat with clasp-knives.
`I shouldn't wonder,' says Dave, `but this is the "whare"*
I suppose if any one was to come along now and look in he'd get scared.'
and scratched his ear, and said, `That looks very much like a blood-stain
* `Whare', `whorrie', Maori name for house.
it was too hot.
I wouldn't have liked to camp there by myself, but I don't think Dave
to mind anything much, or to be surprised at anything;
that he'd mistook him for some one else: he must have been
on the two stools by the heads of our bunks, turned in,
about nothing in particular. Once I happened to look across at Dave,
very slowly, wide, and a black cat walked in, looked first at me,
I fastened that door. They must have left the cat behind.'
.
On
wordlookup.net
All is still licensed under the GNU FDL.
It uses material from the wikipedia.
|
|