How About Some New Constellation Boundaries?

Constellations convenient for sectioning the grand cellestial sphere into
manageable, recognizeable pieces. Back in 1930 astronomers snapped some
chalk lines on the sky, got out their jigsaws and cut out some formal
constellation boundaries. They were pretty smart about it -- "they lie
along the meridians of right ascension and parallels of declination for the
mean equator and equinox of 1875.0" according to:

http://www.iau.org/IAU/Activities/no...ure/const.html

Looking at The Cambridge Star Atlas 3rd Edition which is based on the 2000.0
catalogues it's pretty obvious that the old border boundaries are no longer
convenient. Just look at the UMi boundary closest to the pole! It seems to
be a circular arc centered on absolutely nothing pertinent today. To
accurately determine which constellation an object is located in today one
must translate back to the 1875 frame. How about some new formal boundaries
along the meridians of right ascension and parallels of declination for the
mean equator and equinox of 2000.0? Surely there's gotta be some good grant
money available for that kind of thing.

Regards,
-- Mark

Mark Lepkowski
Email: webmaster at mclTunes dot-com
http://www.mcltunes.com

On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 05:12:33 GMT, "Mark Lepkowski" wrote:

To
accurately determine which constellation an object is located in today one
must translate back to the 1875 frame. How about some new formal boundaries
along the meridians of right ascension and parallels of declination for the
mean equator and equinox of 2000.0?

How about not!

Precessing the constellation boundaries is trivial (literally, three lines of
code in C, including a function call to a general precession function). But if
you change their locations, you break every piece of astronomical software out
there. You also move stars into new constellations, which means some of them now
have to be renamed. Every scientific paper that references an object will have
to be evaluated for whether that object even exists (with that name) anymore!
The existing boundaries are just fine! Who cares if they don't happen to line up
with another set of arbitrary coordinates? And even if you change the boundaries
to line up with 2000.0 coordinates, it isn't 2000 anymore, so they will still
have to be precessed in order to be used. And of course, if we keep moving the
boundaries every century or so (to be pretty), after a while the boundaries
aren't even going to line up with the classical constellations. We're going to
feel pretty silly talking about Scorpius when it is in Sagittarius!

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

Mark Lepkowski wrote:
Constellations convenient for sectioning the grand celestial sphere into
manageable, recognizable pieces. Back in 1930 astronomers snapped some
chalk lines on the sky, got out their jigsaws and cut out some formal
constellation boundaries. They were pretty smart about it -- "they lie
along the meridians of right ascension and parallels of declination for the
mean equator and equinox of 1875.0" according to:

http://www.iau.org/IAU/Activities/no...ure/const.html

Looking at The Cambridge Star Atlas 3rd Edition which is based on the 2000.0
catalogues it's pretty obvious that the old border boundaries are no longer
convenient. Just look at the UMi boundary closest to the pole! It seems to
be a circular arc centered on absolutely nothing pertinent today. To
accurately determine which constellation an object is located in today one
must translate back to the 1875 frame. How about some new formal boundaries
along the meridians of right ascension and parallels of declination for the
mean equator and equinox of 2000.0? Surely there's gotta be some good grant
money available for that kind of thing.

Regards,
-- Mark

Mark Lepkowski
Email: webmaster at mclTunes dot-com
http://www.mcltunes.com



We like the boundaries to stay with the stars that inspired them in the first
place.

Sam Wormley wrote:
Mark Lepkowski wrote:


Looking at The Cambridge Star Atlas 3rd Edition which is based on the
2000.0 catalogues it's pretty obvious that the old border boundaries
are no longer convenient. Just look at the UMi boundary closest to
the pole! It seems to be a circular arc centered on absolutely
nothing pertinent today. To accurately determine which constellation
an object is located in today one must translate back to the 1875
frame. How about some new formal boundaries along the meridians of
right ascension and parallels of declination for the mean equator and
equinox of 2000.0? Surely there's gotta be some good grant money
available for that kind of thing.

Regards,
-- Mark

Mark Lepkowski
Email: webmaster at mclTunes dot-com
http://www.mcltunes.com



We like the boundaries to stay with the stars that inspired them in the
first
place.


I say move Alpharetz back into Pegasus. I'm getting tired of "The Great
Triangle of Pegasus".

Uncle Bob

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And of course, if we keep moving the
boundaries every century or so (to be pretty), after a while the
boundaries
aren't even going to line up with the classical constellations. We're
going to
feel pretty silly talking about Scorpius when it is in Sagittarius!


If that happens, then whoever got the grant money didn't do the job right.

How about some new formal boundaries
along the meridians of right ascension and parallels of declination for
the
mean equator and equinox of 2000.0?

Why?

Surely there's gotta be some good grant
money available for that kind of thing.

Again, why? Why create trouble to align borders to arbitary lines?

This doesn't even make enough sense to qualify as a troll.

Clear Skies

Chuck Taylor
Do you observe the moon?
Try http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lunar-observing/

Are you interested in optics?
Try http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ATM_Optics_Software/

************************************

Regards,
-- Mark

Mark Lepkowski
Email: webmaster at mclTunes dot-com
http://www.mcltunes.com

I say move Alpharetz back into Pegasus.
I'm getting tired of "The Great Triangle
of Pegasus".

Uncle Bob

Well, it may be inside the modern boundaries of Andromeda, but it's
still translated as "the horse's navel."
Marty

"CLT" not@thisaddress wrote in message
...
How about some new formal boundaries
along the meridians of right ascension and parallels of declination for
the
mean equator and equinox of 2000.0?

Why?

Why did they choose the meridians of right ascension and parallels of
declination for the
mean equator and equinox of 1875.0 in 1930?

"Chris L Peterson" wrote in message
...

Precessing the constellation boundaries is trivial (literally, three lines
of
code in C, including a function call to a general precession function).

So what's the equation that governs the tranformation?

Uncle Bob wrote:

I say move Alpharetz back into Pegasus. I'm getting tired of "The Great
Triangle of Pegasus".

....and Scorpius wants his claws back.


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