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| | Naming Stars |
 | | 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. |
 | | Fainter stars are normally identified by their numbers in some catalog, such as the Bonner Durchmusterung (BD), the Henry Draper Catalog (HD) or the General Catalog (GC) of Boss, for example, BD +75 deg 752 (star number 752 in the Declination zone +75 deg) = HD 197433 = GC 28804. |
| www.seds.org /~spider/spider/Misc/naming.html (1067 words) |
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