Saturday, 6 October 2012

amateur observing - How many stars are in the constellation Canis Minor?

You possibly are confused by these two entries in Wikipedia (click on the quotations to go to the original distinct entries:



Canis Minor contains only two stars brighter than the fourth magnitude, Procyon (Alpha Canis Minoris), with a magnitude of 0.34, and Gomeisa (Beta Canis Minoris), with a magnitude of 2.9.



and



This is the list of [56] notable stars in the constellation Canis Minor, sorted by decreasing brightness.



The first statement is about stars brighter than the 4th magnitude, of which there are two, and not about all the others. Those two stars are NOT a binary. Procyon is 11 lightyears away and Gomeisa is 170 lightyears away. Procyon itself is a binary, but for the purpose of general observation is considered to be one star.



The second statement is about "notable stars", which is rather arbitrary. The list is 56 stars long, but in fact is one were to map every star visible to telescopes, there would be thousands.



Another quibble: What perchance is the exact area in the sky that is assigned to Canis Minor? This is not precisely defined. See below.



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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ and ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



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Note the completely different boundaries.

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