Newbie: trying to find 'Hope'

Hi ... A friend has registered a star that she has named as "Hope", and the
only details that she has a RA12hrs 23mins 08sec Dec 4.74489 MAG 14.08

I only have a 'Noddy' telescope but was trying to help her find it using
some cunning software and pure, old fashioned, freezing-yer-buns-off luck.

Could someone please advise if we have the correct information to find
"Hope", and recommend a software package that we can punch the numbers into
to show us roughly where to look?

I use wwwstreetmap.co.uk to generate the Lat & Long for my home address,
beyond that I'm a bit stumped.

Cheers,

Andy

Hi ... A friend has registered a star that she has named as "Hope", and
the only details that she has a RA12hrs 23mins 08sec Dec 4.74489 MAG
14.08

I only have a 'Noddy' telescope but was trying to help her find it using
some cunning software and pure, old fashioned, freezing-yer-buns-off luck.

Could someone please advise if we have the correct information to find
"Hope", and recommend a software package that we can punch the numbers
into to show us roughly where to look?

The position for this star is in Virgo and is quite close to the Sun at the
moment. You're probably not going to be able to see it for at least a couple
of months I'd have thought.

Depending on the size of the telescope, and how dark your skies are, it may
not be easy to view it visually, as this star is not particularly bright,
however, if you want to view it now, then (if you have java enabled on your
browser) you can see it on this website
http://tinyurl.com/b9twt
(The link takes you to the Aladin Sky Atlas)
If you use the "Zoom" or "Magnify" buttons on the toolbar on the right, you
should be able to get a better view of it.

Mag 14.08 is very dim. Not sure you will see it with your "Noddy" telescope.


Steve

"Andrew Kidd" wrote in message
.uk...
Hi ... A friend has registered a star that she has named as "Hope", and
the only details that she has a RA12hrs 23mins 08sec Dec 4.74489 MAG
14.08

I only have a 'Noddy' telescope but was trying to help her find it using
some cunning software and pure, old fashioned, freezing-yer-buns-off luck.

Could someone please advise if we have the correct information to find
"Hope", and recommend a software package that we can punch the numbers
into to show us roughly where to look?

I use wwwstreetmap.co.uk to generate the Lat & Long for my home address,
beyond that I'm a bit stumped.

Cheers,

Andy

Hi Andy,

Good news/bad news I'm afraid...

Good news is you have the x-y co-ordinates for your star which are the
RA values and the DEC value, so you'll able to find it's position (if
not the star) on a computer planetarium (try a free one like Cartes du
Ciel or Halo) quite easily.

The bad news is that the last value, the "MAG", is the brightness of
the star, Mag 14 is very feint and you'll need a large telescope
(around 14 inches wide!!!) to actually see it.

Your best bet may be to find the area of sky where the star is and just
pick a faint one!!!!

Cheers

Andrew Kidd wrote:

Hi ... A friend has registered a star that she has named as "Hope", and
the only details that she has a RA12hrs 23mins 08sec Dec 4.74489 MAG
14.08

Simbad at
http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/sim-fid.pl
or
http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/sim-fsam.pl
list no star at those coordinates
(12 23 8 +4 44 41.604)

But of course there still may be one...

Out of interest down to what Mag is the entire sky reliably mapped?

Gaz

Simbad at
http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/sim-fid.pl
or
http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/sim-fsam.pl
list no star at those coordinates
(12 23 8 +4 44 41.604)

It list no star at these coordinates because it doesn't search through all
of the star catalogues.

Try http://archive.ast.cam.ac.uk/viz-bin/VizieR

put the star coordinates in in the box marked "Target Name", select target
radius to 0.5' and press "Find Data", and you'll get multiple references to
a ~14th magnitude star at that location.

Out of interest down to what Mag is the entire sky reliably mapped?


The USNO B1 catalogue go to about mag 20 or 21, but I'd imagine that many
are missed at those levels, and the positions are apparently generally known
to a few tenths of an arcsecond.

The future GAIA satellite aims to provide sub-milliarcsecond accuracy in
positions for all stars to mag 20 (and accuracy of a few microarcseconds for
stars brighter than mag 15).

Thanks Richard,

Jeez, the GAIA, is that for *ALL* stars? That would be something,,,,

All the best
Gaz

Jeez, the GAIA, is that for *ALL* stars? That would be something,,,,

All stars to mag 20 (about a billion I believe), and a host of other
objects.