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Name a STAR
Makes for the perfect little gift that says and means so much.
You receive: A certificate officiating your registered star name with the following:
co-ordinates of your star, SAO star catalogue number, Spectral Type, Magnitude, Hemisphere, Astrological House
Things to know about a star
There are thousands of stars that can be seen with the naked eye. There are
many thousands of more that can be viewed with a strong pair of binoculars or a good telescope. There are an estimated 100 billion stars in our own Milky Way
Galaxy, and it is estimated that there are 10 to the 24th power stars in the
Universe - that's 1 with 24 zeros after it - much more than we can ever imagine.
The Magnitude of a star is its brightness. The smaller the number, the brighter
the star is. A star with a magnitude of 4 is brighter than a star with a magnitude or 8. We can see stars with the naked eye up to a magnitude of 6 or 6.5, but you can't see a magnitude 6 star unless you have good eyes, it is a clear night, and you are far from any cities. Vega is the reference star and it has a magnitude of zero. There are only a few stars brighter than Vega, and Sirius, the Dog Star, is the brightest star with a magnitude of -1.47.
Stars are grouped by Spectral Type. Spectral type refers to the color of a star.
The types are O, B, A, F, G, K and M. O stars are blue, and B stars are whitish
blue. Type A stars are white. F stars are whitish yellow. G stars are Yellow (our own sun is a G type star). K stars are orange, and M stars are red. If the spectral type is not known the star type will be blank or sometimes U.
A star's position is measured by the distance from the Vernal Equinox. This is the position of the sky directly overhead on the first day of Spring. This method of
positioning stars comes down to us from ancient times. Astrologers used this
method for measuring the houses of the zodiac, but they forgot to account for the fact that the Earth wobbles slightly (like a top that is spinning slowly) and the
earth has tilted a little, so the stars appear to have moved from their ancient
positions. Now the houses of the horoscopes have nothing to do with the
constellations that they were once based upon.
The Longitude and Latitude of the sky are called the Right Ascension and the
Declination? These numbers are traditionally shown in Hours, Minutes and
Seconds, corresponding to the 24 hours in a day, but very often they are show in degrees or radians. 24 hours is 360 degrees or 6.2831… radians.
