We recently had a star named for a friend. We were sent the co-ordinates for the star, but have no idea how to find it. Is there a way to get a general idea of where this star is located with the co-ordinates? If it helps they are Libra 15h 15.5m-27.8degrees. Any advice or a place to start would be much appreciated. Thanks, Chris

-- chris langlois (crsxman@yahoo.com), March 14, 2001

Answers

Chris

The hours figure gives you the Right Ascension of the star, the 27.8 degrees is the declination (is that a negative figure, in which case this is declination South, if positive then declination North).

Ra is roughly like longitude on the globe, and declination is like latitude on the globe.

Find the Altitude and Azimuth at your location and a given date and time of day corresponding to the Ra and Dec coordinates. You can calculate this yourself given the method in the Astronomical Calculations web site, or download some software to do the sum.

You then know roughly what direction your star lies in at least.

-- Keith Burnett (kburnett@btinternet.com), March 15, 2001.