Updating starnames.dat

[richard]

Also: 51 Gem = BQ Gem not Bq; 23 Sex = RS Sex not Rs; 73 Dra = AF Dra not Af. Carina is missing all Lacaille-assigned capital letters from A Car.

Is this the right place to report these?

[richard]

Initial version uploaded at http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catal ... on_id=1537 . Includes Gould references, some additional Greek designations missing from SIMBAD, and starting to clean up the proper names (typos, foreign language and non-standard).

The Gould designations are particularly useful for those stars only otherwise known by HD or other catalogue numbers. Those that are close to the Sun have usually retained their Gould designation (see any modern atlas). Gould numbers are assigned to (roughly) every star south of +10 degrees with V <= 7.0.

[t00fri]

Initial version uploaded at http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catal ... on_id=1537 . Includes Gould references, some additional Greek designations missing from SIMBAD, and starting to clean up the proper names (typos, foreign language and non-standard).

The Gould designations are particularly useful for those stars only otherwise known by HD or other catalogue numbers. Those that are close to the Sun have usually retained their Gould designation (see any modern atlas). Gould numbers are assigned to (roughly) every star south of +10 degrees with V <= 7.0.

Did you successfully negotiate meanwhile with the people at SIMBAD? Or does your update at ML now break the previously achieved compatibility of celestia's star names with the SIMBAD notations that are used by the global scientific community of professional astronomers?

Fridger

[John Van Vliet]

--- edit ---

[richard]

Hi John. Thanks for your review of the addon--your comments were passed on to me and I indicated that I would address them & provide a new version. I became distracted by other concerns for a week or two, and then the addon was suddenly added.

I intend to follow your suggestions for the next update, which I planned to do down the track as I didn't want to bother the admins too much, but I'm happy to bring it forward if that's your preference.

Re: breaking other addons, my feeling (only that) is that it won't, unless they have specifically used an incorrect/non-standard name. In any case, I think a warning in the ReadMe & back-out instructions should serve our purposes.

Richard

[granthutchison]

Before heading off, I'd just indicate some typos & non-standard spellings I've noticed which I'll leave you to consider and act upon as you see fit: Rigel Kentaurus -> Rigil Kentaurus. xi Tuc -> XI Tuc. Beteigeuze. Alnasi. Tsih, Tsze, Tseen, Tsze Tseang, Kaou Pih (are Chinese names 'popular' in an English program?).

Also: 51 Gem = BQ Gem not Bq; 23 Sex = RS Sex not Rs; 73 Dra = AF Dra not Af.

I've been meaning to address these for some time.

Bq Gem, Rs Sex and Af Dra are clearly errors in starnames.dat: text-processing somewhere along the line has broken the standard pair of capital letters which are the universal and correct form of these designators. In this respect Celestia is in conflict with SIMBAD. There are another two errors of the same sort in Celestia: Cs Vir and Rr UMi. I presume no-one would wish to do other than fix Celestia.

Beteigeuze, Alnasi and Rigel Kentaurus are clearly misprints of fairly common star names. None appears in SIMBAD in either the correct or mangled form, so it seems sensible to fix these, too.

The Chinese names are standard transliterations of standard Chinese star names, although the identification with specific stars seems to be in some cases open to debate. In the absence of an actual expert in the history of Chinese star names, I'd suggest we should leave them alone, unless there is some enthusiasm for filleting starnames.dat of such rarely encountered "popular" names.

Xi Tuc is a globular cluster, and the .dsc files don't seem to parse to display this with a consistent Greek letter when renamed "XI Tuc"; likewise for Omega Cen if it's converted to "OME Cen".

Grant

[granthutchison]

In the absence of any dissent (or indeed interest of any kind), I've commited the revisions to starnames.dat as I proposed above.

Grant

[richard]

From me, many thanks.

Regarding the Chinese names, most of them come from a very old book by Allen, who is known to have mixed up various things. I would promote removing the Chinese names, even if we could get an authority to confirm them. (Shouldn't we be using pinyin for Chinese names these days...?)

Thanks again

Richard

[granthutchison]

Regarding the Chinese names, most of them come from a very old book by Allen, who is known to have mixed up various things.

Some of the names appear not to match Allen's assignments.

I would promote removing the Chinese names, even if we could get an authority to confirm them. (Shouldn't we be using pinyin for Chinese names these days...?)

It's standard to retain Wade-Giles in some cases, when that transliteration has become customary in English: so we still see Tao more often than Dao, I Ching rather than Y? J?ng and Lao Tzu rather than L?oz?. I for one recognize Tsze Tseang as a star name, but would be baffled by C?ji?ng, no matter how much closer that takes me to the "correct" Mandarin pronunciation. As a smart editor told me many years ago, it's all about using language for communication rather than demonstrating one's own knowledge.

Grant

[richard]

I wouldn't call these names customary ... but I suppose it's a matter of personal opinion. Since the proposal was for deletions rather than corrections, I don't feel too strongly about it.

[richard]

Back after a break looking at other things.

I will be compiling an update to my Gould add-on shortly. John V V, I've noted your queries from last time, and will expand the documentation to address these before I submit.

My various thoughts generated from this thread:

1. Fridger asked about breaking "the previously achieved compatibility of celestia's star names with the SIMBAD notations that are used by the global scientific community of professional astronomers?" Unfortunately this is an overly-optimistic assessment of the quality of starnames.dat, particularly with regard to star names. Lot of junk, typos in there; some formatting issues too (thanks to Grant for updating some of these for the next celestia update).

2. I've changed my thinking slightly on Gould designations over the last few months. Historically, using the G is correct, though I can only speak for English-speaking countries. Since it appears that way in S&T atlasses and publications (and others), used by astronomers all over the world, these designations have to be accepted, regardless of what scientific papers use. 82 G Eri is the example we discussed before.

However I believe for the future, Gould numbers have a greater chance of being adopted if the G is dropped where there is no clash with Flamsteed/Bode numbers (as evidenced as to what has happened in SIMBAD etc). So I'm still mulling over the solution (which will involve contacting SIMBAD at some point, once I've thought it all out). It may involve accepting both formats where appropriate.

3. Chinese and rarely-used secondary arabic names should, in my opinion, be culled from the database. It generates a lot of noise, given how many other ids (HD, HIP, CCDM) we want to show on the screen. Not the biggest issue, but I'm doing some of that in my add-on. Feel free to have a look at the results when it is ready.

And generally, I'm happy to contribute to improving the quality of identifiers used in celestia, in whichever direction the community moves.

Richard

[richard]

Gould add-on updated and found at http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catal ... on_id=1537.

For those interested in the Gould Catalogue more generally, the guys at SIMBAD have updated the Vizier catalog page nicely: you can find it at http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/Vizi ... %2Fcatalog . Fill out the G and cst fields with the number and the 3-letter constellation acronym, and press Submit.

Richard

[t00fri]

Back after a break looking at other things.
My various thoughts generated from this thread:

1. Fridger asked about breaking "the previously achieved compatibility of celestia's star names with the SIMBAD notations that are used by the global scientific community of professional astronomers?" Unfortunately this is an overly-optimistic assessment of the quality of starnames.dat, particularly with regard to star names. Lot of junk, typos in there; some formatting issues too (thanks to Grant for updating some of these for the next celestia update).

Richard

Richard,

your interpretation of my initial request distorts considerably what I meant to express.

Residual typos or other remaining (accidental) violations of SIMBAD in the Celestia star database should simply be eliminated as quickly as possible. It's just a bug-fixing task. However, such kinds of "accidental SIMBAD violations" reside on a completely different level from systematically introducing new starnames that manifestly break the naming standards accepted by SIMBAD.

Fridger

[richard]

your interpretation of my initial request distorts considerably what I meant to express.

Residual typos or other remaining (accidental) violations of SIMBAD in the Celestia star database should simply be eliminated as quickly as possible. It's just a bug-fixing task. However, such kinds of "accidental SIMBAD violations" reside on a completely different level from systematically introducing new starnames that manifestly break the naming standards accepted by SIMBAD.

Hi Fridger, thanks for your clarification. Probably just a communication breakdown at my end. Best wishes, Richard.

[t00fri]

your interpretation of my initial request distorts considerably what I meant to express.

Residual typos or other remaining (accidental) violations of SIMBAD in the Celestia star database should simply be eliminated as quickly as possible. It's just a bug-fixing task. However, such kinds of "accidental SIMBAD violations" reside on a completely different level from systematically introducing new starnames that manifestly break the naming standards accepted by SIMBAD.

Hi Fridger, thanks for your clarification. Probably just a communication breakdown at my end. Best wishes, Richard.

Richard,

I should add that it would be great if any inconsistencies found by us in SIMBAD were also reported to the SIMBAD staff....My dream is just ONE astronomical world data base that we all can rely on...

Fridger

[richard]

I should add that it would be great if any inconsistencies found by us in SIMBAD were also reported to the SIMBAD staff....My dream is just ONE astronomical world data base that we all can rely on...

Yes, definitely.