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In 2016, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) organized a Working Group on Star Names (WGSN) [2] to catalog and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN's first bulletin, dated July 2016, [3] included a table of 125 stars comprising the first two batches of names approved by the WGSN (on 30 June and 20 July 2016) together with names of stars adopted by the IAU Executive Committee ...
The Bright Star Catalogue, which is a star catalogue listing all stars of apparent magnitude 6.5 or brighter, or roughly every star visible to the naked eye from Earth, contains 9,096 stars. [1] The most voluminous modern catalogues list on the order of a billion stars, out of an estimated total of 200 to 400 billion in the Milky Way .
There are about 300 to 350 stars with traditional or historical proper names. They tend to be the brightest stars in the sky and are often the most prominent ones of the constellation. Examples are Betelgeuse, Rigel and Vega. Most such names are derived from the Arabic language (see List of Arabic star names § History of Arabic star names).
An asterism is an observed pattern or group of stars in the sky. Asterisms can be any identified pattern or group of stars, and therefore are a more general concept than the 88 formally defined constellations. Constellations are based on asterisms, but unlike asterisms, constellations outline and today completely divide the sky and all its ...
In astronomy, star names, in contrast to star designations, are proper names of stars that have emerged from usage in pre-modern astronomical traditions. Lists of these names appear in the following articles: List of Arabic star names; List of Chinese star names; List of proper names of stars: traditional proper names in modern usage around ...
All stars but one can be associated with an IAU (International Astronomical Union) constellation. IAU constellations are areas of the sky. Although there are only 88 IAU constellations, the sky is actually divided into 89 irregularly shaped boxes as the constellation Serpens is split into two separate sections, Serpens Caput (the snake's head) to the west and Serpens Cauda (the snake's tail ...
The Flamsteed designation of a star, for example, consists of a number and the genitive form of the constellation's name. Other star patterns or groups called asterisms are not constellations under the formal definition, but are also used by observers to navigate the night sky. Asterisms may be several stars within a constellation, or they may ...
The Chinese Sky During the Han: Constellating Stars and Society (Sun & Kistemaker 1997) is considered authoritative with early Chinese name-star identifications and spellings, adopting of Chinese asterism names for individual stars should be avoided as it would cause confusion, Pinyin spelling is preferred.