pixelbasher wrote in post #8915089
Now I am trying to work out what is above it in the shot. If I have my bearings correct it shows up as cap HIP 1055115 with a funny letter before the word cap. What is it?
It's a star: Iota Capricorni, or ι cap. Lower-case iota in a sans-serif font looks like a funny letter.
From the International Astronomical Union page on naming astronomical objects:
http://www.iau.org …ress/themes/naming/#stars
The earliest naming system which is still popular was introduced by Johann Bayer in his Uranometria star catalog of 1603. As many predecessors and successors, he used constellations to identify stars within them. To distinguish the stars in each constellation, he labelled them with Greek letters, and approximately in the order of their (apparent) brightness, so that the brightest star was labelled Alpha, the second brightest Beta, an so on. For example, the brightest star in Cygnus (the Swan) is Alpha Cygni (note the use of the genitive of the Latin constellation name) which is also called Deneb, or the brightest star in Leo (the Lion) is Alpha Leonis, also called Regulus. Misestimates and other irregularities are the reasons why this is only an approximate scheme: for example, the brightest star in Gemini (the Twins) is Beta Geminorum (Pollux) while Alpha Geminorum (Castor) is only the second brightest star of the constellation. Unfortunately, the Greek alphabet has only 24 letters, and many constellations contain many more stars, even if the naming is restricted to those visible to the naked eye. Johann Bayer then employed low case letters from "a" to "z" and then upper case letters from "A" to "Z" for the stars number 25 to 50 and 51 to 76 in each constellation, respectively.
HIP 105515 is its designation in the Hipparcos star catalog.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipparcos
HTH,
David
ops
