Category:88 IAU-Constellations

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History

Over the course of the decade of the 1920s, the IAU officially defined the borders of the constellations as lines of constant right ascension and declination (for the equator and equinox of B1875.0). This definition is used as international standard in research papers.

However, there is no single date of the definition but there are actually some very important dates:

  1. 1922 The international standardization of 89 Latin constellation names:
    1. in nominative and genitive forms and their three-letter-abbreviations.
    2. the defunct constellation Argo (Arg) was also included for historical reasons.
  2. 1925 Delporte's presentation of his definition of border lines.
  3. 1928 the acceptance of Delporte's suggestion.
  4. 1930 publication of Delporte's delineation of the constellation boundaries[1] with an accompanying celestial atlas.[2]

The origins of these constellations are diverse.

Constellation from a given position

Algorithms for determining the IAU constellation from a given celestial position were published by Roman[3] and Glaschke.[4]

Constellation areas

Following Delporte's publication of the IAU constellation boundaries independent computations of the constellation areas, expressed in square degrees (deg2), were published in 1934 by Levin[5] and in 1937 by Brocchi.[6] Both authors give the constellation areas to the nearest 0.001 deg2 but occasionally differ by one unit in the last significant place.[7]

References

  1. Eugène Joseph Delporte, Délimitation scientifique des constellations (tables et cartes) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930) [online link].
  2. Eugène Joseph Delporte, Atlas céleste (Cambridge: Cambridge Unibversity Press, 1930) -- reprinted in 2013 by Cambridge University Press.
  3. Nancy G. Roman, "Identification of a Constellation from a Position", Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 99 (1987), 695-699 [ADS link / JSTOR link].
  4. Patrick Glaschke, "Fast Determination of Constellation Membership", eprint arXiv:1008.3966 (2010) [ADS link].
  5. Arthur Everard Levin, "Areas of the Constellations", Astronomical Association Handbook for 1935 (London: Astronomical Association, 1934), pp. 34-35 [online link] -- reprinted in the Handbook of the British Astronomical Association for 1972 (London: British Astronomical Association, 1971), pp. 65-66.
  6. Dalmero Francis Brocchi, "Constellations", Popular Astronomy: A Review of Astronomy and Allied Sciences, 45 (1937), 130-134 [ADS link].
  7. Online data appear to be based on Levin's computations.

Pages in category "88 IAU-Constellations"

The following 22 pages are in this category, out of 22 total.