Greetings.

I am working on a project where I need to know specifics about a lot of stars. I can live with just those within the constellations "proper," but more would be nice. I have so far come across a few good sites about cartography ("here it is"), but I cannot find a compiled table ("here is *what* it is").

The things I need most are:

Name (Scientific and/or common)
Location (RA, hrs/mins, etc)
Spectral Type (Oh, Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me Right Now *Smack*)
Relationship (Gravitational binary, visual binary, "bachelor," ect.)
Magnitude (Apparent is good enough)
Special (variable, eclipsing, pulsar, etc.)
Distance from Earth

All input is appreciated and thanked for in advance.

A lot of good reference books are out there, but you can also get that info from the planetarium software. SkyMap has a free download, still, I think. There are others.

When you say constellations "proper," what do you mean by that? All stars are contained in one of the 88 constellations.

I bet tracer has something to say about this :wink:

Thank you for the quick reply. My personal library is a bit dated, so I need to update anyway. My local stores are depressingly thin in astronomy, so I will have to search on-line.

I have a star program for my computer, but it is mostly "backyard astronomy tips," such as: find Algol on 3 Sep, 2008. I will look into SkyMap, as you suggest.

As to constellations "proper:" I thought about explaining this only *after* I posted. To me, a "constellation proper" consists only of those bodies typically included in the connect-the-dots representation of a constellation, whereas everything else within "constellational territory" is filler, of sorts.

Ex: I have a book that shows seven stars in Andromeda proper, with a lot of others "taking up space on the page."

I need the data for the ones in Andromeda (and others) *proper;* data on filler is also preferred, but I can live without it (for now).

I use these sites for worldbuilding purposes:

http://www.stellar-database.com/
http://www.glyphweb.com/esky/
http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/sowlist.html
http://www.alcyone.de/SIT/
there are a lot of fascinating stars up there, but sometimes information is different between databases, so compare and contrast where necessary...

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Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense- Novella Contest Issue! . OA Flickr set

That last one is just the sort of thing I was looking for - thank you *so* much.

I have *no* idea how I missed it when I conducted my last round of searches. :roll:

I would, except eburacum45 beat me to the punch. (And to think that Gremalkyn preferred "that last one" to that impeccable first link on eburacum45's list. Hmph!)

The Internet Stellar Database is, indeed, a fine site. My preference for Alcyone, however, is because it lists several stars on the same page (depending on the search specs) and I only need to click on options that sound like what I am trying to find. The Stellar Database appears to be asking me to *supply* just the kind of information that I am trying to *extract.*

Once I absorb the Alcyone information, I will probably feed some data into the Stellar Database and see what it gives me. But, at this stage, that would be considered "advanced" research, and I am just not ready for that yet.

I suppose, to those with more experience with this stuff, there might not seem to be much of a difference. I am far more of a general hobbyist than anything else, though I like to read and understand this (and other) stuff.

I heard an astronomy lecture a while back that a new field in astronomy was the field of internet astronomy. Dr. Morgan, the speaker, noted that traditional astronomers might scoff but the amount of data that was being collected was 'astronomical'. :wink: He went on to say that about half of it was available for public access. All the data collected creates opportunities for new research from your home PC.

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The real news, including science news corporations may not allow on stations they own. http://www.democracynow.org/

True - I can find more info faster on-line than I can get at the local or university libraries. Part of why I signed up for this site. I just need to know what questions to ask. :roll:

Search engines are about as helpful to me as the old index cards at the library, in that, you have to know what you want *before* you look, or you will find too many things to sift.

I can relate. I hate looking for 1500 different topics trying to find something simple that doesn't come up when you search for it. And, some of the stuff the search does turn up is completely unrelated. :roll:

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The real news, including science news corporations may not allow on stations they own. http://www.democracynow.org/

Also, on-line, spelling is far more important than with index cards. I wound up somewhere in Scotland's local networks when I spelled something the "British-English" way instead of the "American-English" way.

So, I clicked on it. Gaelic, or some such. Nice photos, though.

FWIW - I think that when you say "constellation proper" (connect the dots), you are referring to what is known as an asterism (a pattern within a constellation). An example would be the "Big Dipper" which is only part of the constellation Ursa Major. Another would be the "Teapot" in Sagittarius. 8)

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Yes! "Asterism." =D>

I understand (conceptually) that everything within a constellation's border is considered a part of the constellation, but it "feels" wrong. Only those things in the asterism feel *proper.*

Ex: Zeta Andromedae is located within Andromeda's borders, but is not a part of the asterism (in my reference diagram, anyway), therefore it feels improper to insist that Zeta is a part of of the constellation itself. Rather, Zeta is simply found with Andromeda's territorial borders.

Like Guam. It is not a *state,* but it is a part of the U.S. because it is a trust territory.

That's like saying that Texas only consists of the major cities like Dallas, Ft. Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, etc. But little towns like Elgin, Bastrop, Kyle, Buda, Henrietta, Dime Box, Cut and Shoot, etc. are not part of "Texas proper"! :roll: [-X 8)

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Not exactly a good match: Texas is not usually depicted as a connect-the-cities design, but is usually drawn showing its borders. A constellation, however, *is* often depicted as just the asterism, not the spacial boundaries. Some people only think of the shape of Texas as defined by its borders, whereas some people only think of the constellations as defined by their asterisms.

I am actually somewhere inbetween: I *know* that there is more to a constellation than just the asterism, but everything not in the asterism itself just seems like extra stuff. When I think of where I live, I envision the house, the yard, the driveway, the shed, the greenhouse, the mailbox, ... But, I live in the house, not in the mailbox. Insisting that the mailbox is a part of the *property* is quite correct, but it is improper to insist that the mailbox is a part of the *house.*

(Please note: I am not picking a fight, just trying to explain my position.)

However, the asteroid in Armageddon :P was supposed to be "the size of Texas."

Which leads me to ask: Just how thick is Texas? I know how wide (east-to-west) it is. I know how tall (north-to-south) it is. I can look those up on a map. But when a 3-dimensional chunk of rock is said to be "the size of Texas," I need to know about Texas's thickness in order to make a fair comparison. If Texas is only as thick as, say, the first meter of topsoil, that doesn't make for a very big asteroid!

No! LOL. "size of Texas" means it has about the same radius as Texas, even though Texas is not circular. It's shadow would cover most of Texas, in other words.

Although, Texas can be pretty thick...

[Magilla Gorilla voice]

Hey! I resemble that remark! 8)

[/ Magilla Gorilla voice]

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

I think that property rights are supposed to extend to the center of the planet, so Texas would be a wedge roughly 4000 miles thick. You also own air rights overhead; my guess is that these now terminate somewhere below LEO. Probably that's irrelevant; probably they're only interested in the mass. Texas has a surface area of 266,807 sq miles. The earth has a surface area of 196,938,800 sq miles, and a mass of 6,588,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons, so Texas masses around 8,925,000,000,000,000,000 tons.

So, if the object has the same surface area as Texas, it would be about 146 miles in radius. If its shadow had the same area as Texas it would be roughly 291 miles in radius. If it had the same volume as Texas it would be about 877 miles in radius. We'd need a density guess before we could figure how big it would be to have the same mass as Texas.

Sure glad you didn't say Texans.

That's the one.