Talk:List of stars in Argo Navis

Where's Vela?

In 1752, Argo Navis was divided into Carina, Puppis, and Vela (and maybe Pyxis). So now we have List of stars in Carina, List of stars in Puppis, List of stars in Vela, and List of stars in Pyxis. We also have this extra List of stars in Argo Navis article, with a section of stars in Carina, and a section of stars in Puppis. Where's Vela? Art LaPella (talk) 18:28, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Regardless of this problem, the two lists already on the page should definitely be combined into one full list (of course with Vela's stars included when it is added). I hesitate to do this, though, until I make the necessary changes to those lists, like I have been doing to the others (see List of stars in Vulpecula for an example of what they should look like). Pyxis actually wasn't part of the original Argo Navis, from what I gather, but instead was added to the ship later, so its stars should not be included. StringTheory11 (t • c) 01:14, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm seriously considering undertaking the task of melding the two lists here and the Vela list into one big list. I've completed tasks of similar scopes before. HOWEVER! The finished table should indicate which current constellation each star belongs to. As the table is now, that will be possible only for those stars happen to have "Car," "Pup," or "Vel" in one of their designations. I can think of a couple of solutions:

Assign a color to each of the three constellations, and give each row in the table the appropriate color. Of course, this would be a problem for the colorblind.
Add another column for the name or abbreviation (or just the initial) of the constellation. I wonder if we need so many columns in this table anyway; all that information is in the lists for the three current constellations.

Anybody have any thoughts on this? One or the other solution? Both? Something I haven't thought of? Uporządnicki (talk) 19:52, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If we have a list for Argo at all, it should include stars from at least Carina, Puppis, and Vela, and probably Pyxis as well (since the area of Pyxis was definitely part of the original constellation, constituting the mast of the ship). But the real problem is that combining the lists of the modern constellations gives a false impression. In its day, Argo had no well-defined boundaries. Gould was perhaps the first to clearly delineate the boundaries, but Gould was also the first to finally dispense with Argo entirely (so that, e.g., Canopus was unambiguously α Car and not α Nav). Given that the fainter stars in these lists were never catalogued as part of Argo, this list is rather pointless, as well as misleading. I think the article should be deleted. -- Elphion (talk) 19:13, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Elphion I think one reason to have something like this list is, it accounts for the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta etc. in one place. That's a reason; I'm open to opinions on whether it's a good reason. But you know, I started on something a couple of years ago when I wrote the comments above; it turned out to be a much bigger undertaking than I expected, other things intruded, and I haven't looked at it in quite a while. I found reproduced on line a 19th century (I think, or was it 18th?) book that crunched Lacaille's data and presented in a quite readable form (I've also found LaCaille's raw data, but I haven't managed to make sense of it). The book I found designates the brightest of the stars in question--the first Greek alphabet in the Bayer designations--were indicated as Carina, Puppis and Vela. The rest are identified as Argo Navis. That was interesting. I thought a suitable scope for this list would be all those stars in that catalog designated Carina, Puppis, Vela, or Argo Navis. The ones that LaCaille actually recorded. And that list only goes down to about 6th magnitude (there are still several hundred). So no need to list every 14th magnitude variable brown dwarf, or whatever. Uporządnicki (talk) 01:29, 29 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To keep track of the Greek-letter stars in Argo, it would suffice to add a 24-line table to Argo Navis giving the current constellation and current name, with links to the articles for the stars and perhaps to List of stars in Car/Pup/Vel. Something like the following table. I still think a combined "List of stars in Argo Navis" is over-kill. -- Elphion (talk)

Greek-letter Bayer designations in Argo Navis
Before Gould	Modern designation	Modern name
α Nav	α Car	Canopus
β Nav	β Car	Miaplacidus
γ Nav	γ Vel	Regor
δ Nav	δ Vel	Alsephina
ε Nav	ε Car	Avior
ζ Nav	ζ Pup	Naos
η Nav	η Car
θ Nav	θ Car
ι Nav	ι Car	Aspidiske
κ Nav	κ Vel	Markeb
λ Nav	λ Vel	Suhail
μ Nav	μ Vel
ν Nav	ν Pup
ξ Nav	ξ Pup	Asmidiske
ο Nav	ο Vel or ο Pup^[1]
π Nav	π Pup
ρ Nav	ρ Pup	Tureis
σ Nav	σ Pup
τ Nav	τ Pup
υ Nav	υ Car
φ Nav	φ Vel
χ Nav	χ Car
ψ Nav	ψ Vel
ω Nav	ω Car

References

^ According to Wagman (Lost Stars, McDonald & Woodward, 2003, p. 257), Lacaille's Omicron Navis became Omicron Velorum, and "Omicron Puppis" is an error for what should properly be Latin-letter o Puppis. The designation Omicron for Omicron Puppis is now fairly standard, however. The search key for this star in the search page at SIMBAD, for example, is "* omi Pup".

Elphion, well this was very interesting. I've been--on and off--looking at two historic (and certainly public domain) sources directly based on Lacaille's observations. And I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who's having trouble with Roman lower case "o" and Greek lower case omicron. I also have some questions regarding i and iota (and in some cases, as a result of type face, v and nu).

Let me be clear! I'm not arguing that there should be more than you've said--nor even whether this article should even exist. I'm exploring possibilities. And in my own computer (nothing in Wikipedia, yet) I've constructed a table, and might do a second one, of stars designated in those sources as Argo (Argus), Puppis (Argus in Puppi), Carina (Argus in Carina), and Vela (Argus in Velorum). The table I've done lists 341 stars, down to magnitude 6 (according to the source). The next one would go to magnitude 7, and include a lot more.

There are two complications in all this. In one of the sources, Right Ascension is given in DEGREES, arcminutes and arcseconds, rather than HOURS, minutes and seconds. Yes, I can figure out a way to convert; when it came to converting 341 times, I taught myself to set Apple Numbers to make calculations (I had to enter the degrees, arcminutes and arcseconds in separate columns, and then present the results also in separate columns, which looks odd, but it works). Then I found that the other source gives Declinations NOT in negative degrees (i.e. angle from the equator), but in degrees FROM THE NORTH POLE. Yes, that's a MUCH simpler--even a trivial--conversion, until you have to do it 500 or 600 times.

It might just be because I've done all this work so far (I'm a LONG way from finishing), but I'm sort of inclined towards the idea that such a list could be of interest. It would be a list of the stars of Argo Navis as observed as such by Lacaille, and as listed and designated by those who directly crunched Lacaille's numbers after his death. And it would only go to magnitude 6 or 7. Objects Lacaille did not note and could not have observed would have no place in it. Uporządnicki (talk) 18:22, 3 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed something else here. I'd thought that to make this list, someone had just copied and pasted the tables for Carina and Puppis. (And I certainly do think that if we're to have those here, we should have Vela, too). But now I see that each of the the two tables here includes a column for Gould designations, which the tables on the respective pages do not. Uporządnicki (talk) 18:22, 3 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The List of stars in XXX tables originally did include Gould numbers (for constellations that have stars with Gould numbers), so clearly the tables were copied before the Gould numbers were stripped out. -- Elphion (talk) 20:39, 3 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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The newest "solution"?

Well, of all the "solutions" I've seen discussed for the Argo Navis problem, this one just unilaterally applied is certainly the most straightforward. Uporządnicki (talk) 19:00, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

[1] According to Wagman (Lost Stars, McDonald & Woodward, 2003, p. 257), Lacaille's Omicron Navis became Omicron Velorum, and "Omicron Puppis" is an error for what should properly be Latin-letter o Puppis. The designation Omicron for Omicron Puppis is now fairly standard, however. The search key for this star in the search page at SIMBAD, for example, is "* omi Pup".

[1]