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Burnham Double Star Catalogue

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89-668: The Burnham Double Star Catalogue ( BDS ) is a catalogue of double stars within 121° of the celestial North Pole . It was published in two parts by the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1906, under the title A General Catalogue of Double Stars Within 121° of the North Pole . The first part gives coordinates, designations, and magnitudes for 13,665 pairs of double stars, comprising almost all double stars discovered before 1906. The second part contains measures, notes, and references to publications for each pair. Its publication

178-838: A combination of Gaia and Tycho-2 data for those objects in both catalogues, light curves, and characteristics for about 3000 variable stars, and positions and magnitudes for more than 2000 extragalactic sources used to define the celestial reference frame. The second data release (DR2), which occurred on 25 April 2018, is based on 22 months of observations made between 25 July 2014 and 23 May 2016. It includes positions, parallaxes, and proper motions for about 1.3 billion stars and positions of an additional 300 million stars, red and blue photometric data for about 1.1 billion stars and single colour photometry for an additional 400 million stars, and median radial velocities for about 7 million stars between magnitude 4 and 13. It also contains data for over 14,000 selected Solar System objects. The first part of

267-462: A disturbance. The disturbance causes a flood, which forces the resident gods of Nippur under the leadership of Enlil to take shelter in the Eshumesha temple to Ninurta . Enlil is enraged at Marduk's transgression and orders the gods of Eshumesha to take Marduk and the other Anunnaki as prisoners. The Anunnaki are captured, but Marduk appoints his front-runner Mushteshirhablim to lead a revolt against

356-438: A flood again. When Enlil sees that Utnapishtim and his family have survived, he is outraged, but his son Ninurta speaks up in favor of humanity, arguing that, instead of causing floods, Enlil should simply ensure that humans never become overpopulated by reducing their numbers using wild animals and famines. Enlil goes into the boat; Utnapishtim and his wife bow before him. Enlil, now appeased, grants Utnapishtim immortality as

445-429: A full set of the classical constellations around 370 BC. His catalogue Phaenomena , rewritten by Aratus of Soli between 275 and 250 BC as a didactic poem, became one of the most consulted astronomical texts in antiquity and beyond. It contained descriptions of the positions of the stars and the shapes of the constellations, and provided information on their relative times of rising and setting. Approximately in

534-794: A lot of catalogues cross-reference the Durchmusterungs without specifying which one is used in the zones of overlap, so some confusion often remains. Star names from these catalogues include the initials of which of the four catalogues they are from (though the Southern follows the example of the Bonner and uses BD; CPD is often shortened to CP), followed by the angle of declination of the star (rounded towards zero, and thus ranging from +00 to +89 and −00 to −89), followed by an arbitrary number as there are always thousands of stars at each angle. Examples include BD+50°1725 or CD−45°13677. The Henry Draper Catalogue

623-427: A reference by observatories around the world throughout the 19th century. The Bonner Durchmusterung ( German : Bonn sampling) and follow-ups were the most complete of the pre-photographic star catalogues. The Bonner Durchmusterung itself was published by Friedrich Wilhelm Argelander , Adalbert Krüger , and Eduard Schönfeld between 1852 and 1859. It covered 320,000 stars in epoch 1855.0. As it covered only

712-537: A reward for his loyalty to the gods. Plucks at the roots, tears at the crown, the pickax spares the... plants; the pickax, its fate is decreed by father Enlil, the pickax is exalted. A nearly complete 108-line poem from the Early Dynastic Period ( c. 2900–2350 BC) describes Enlil's invention of the mattock , a key agricultural pick, hoe, ax, or digging tool of the Sumerians. In the poem, Enlil conjures

801-526: A shepherd and a farmer, respectively. The two gods argue and Emesh lays claim to Enten's position. They take the dispute before Enlil, who rules in favor of Enten; the two gods rejoice and reconcile. In the Sumerian poem Lugale (ETCSL 1.6.2 ), Enlil gives advice to his son, the god Ninurta , advising him on a strategy to slay the demon Asag . This advice is relayed to Ninurta by way of Sharur , his enchanted talking mace, which had been sent by Ninurta to

890-399: A sinner. The Sumerians believed that the sole purpose of humanity's existence was to serve the gods. They thought that a god's statue was a physical embodiment of the god himself. As such, cult statues were given constant care and attention and a set of priests were assigned to tend to them. People worshipped Enlil by offering food and other human necessities to him. The food, which

979-622: A special data set, the Gaia Andromeda Photometric Survey (GAPS). The final Gaia catalogue is expected to be released three years after the end of the Gaia mission. Specialized catalogues make no effort to list all the stars in the sky, working instead to highlight a particular type of star, such as variables or nearby stars . Aitken 's double star catalogue (1932) lists 17,180 double stars north of declination −30 degrees. Stephenson's General Catalogue of galactic Carbon stars

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1068-546: A star which is often referred to by one of these unofficial GJ numbers is GJ 3021 . The General Catalogue of Trigonometric Parallaxes, first published in 1952 and later superseded by the New GCTP (now in its fourth edition), covers nearly 9,000 stars. Unlike the Gliese, it does not cut off at a given distance from the Sun; rather it attempts to catalogue all known measured parallaxes. It gives

1157-501: Is a catalogue of 7000+ carbon stars . The Gliese (later Gliese- Jahreiß ) catalogue attempts to list all star systems within 20 parsecs (65 ly) of Earth ordered by right ascension (see the List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs ). Later editions expanded the coverage to 25 parsecs (82 ly). Numbers in the range 1.0–915.0 ( Gl numbers) are from the second edition, which was The integers up to 915 represent systems which were in

1246-432: Is a nearly complete 152-line Sumerian poem describing the affair between Enlil and the goddess Ninlil . First, Ninlil's mother Nunbarshegunu instructs Ninlil to go bathe in the river. Ninlil goes to the river, where Enlil seduces her and impregnates her with their son, the moon-god Nanna . Because of this, Enlil is banished to Kur , the Sumerian underworld. Ninlil follows Enlil to the underworld, where he impersonates

1335-525: Is also sometimes referred to in Sumerian texts as Nunamnir . According to one Sumerian hymn, Enlil himself was so holy that not even the other gods could look upon him. Enlil rose to prominence during the twenty-fourth century BC with the rise of Nippur. His cult fell into decline after Nippur was sacked by the Elamites in 1230 BC and he was eventually supplanted as the chief god of the Mesopotamian pantheon by

1424-586: Is an ancient Mesopotamian god associated with wind, air, earth, and storms. He is first attested as the chief deity of the Sumerian pantheon , but he was later worshipped by the Akkadians , Babylonians , Assyrians , and Hurrians . Enlil's primary center of worship was the Ekur temple in the city of Nippur , which was believed to have been built by Enlil himself and was regarded as the "mooring-rope" of heaven and earth. He

1513-524: Is attributed to Shi Shen, and the Astronomic star observation (天文星占, Tianwen xingzhan) to Gan De. It was not until the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) that astronomers started to observe and record names for all the stars that were apparent (to the naked eye ) in the night sky, not just those around the ecliptic. A star catalogue is featured in one of the chapters of the late 2nd-century-BC history work Records of

1602-498: Is omitted. The epoch for the position measurements in the latest edition is J2000.0 . The SAO catalogue contains this major piece of information not in Draper, the proper motion of the stars, so it is often used when that fact is of importance. The cross-references with the Draper and Durchmusterung catalogue numbers in the latest edition are also useful. Names in the SAO catalogue start with

1691-638: Is one of the best, both in the proper motion and star position till 1999. Not as precise as the Hipparcos catalogue but with many more stars. The PPM was built from BD, SAO, HD, and more, with sophisticated algorithm and is an extension for the Fifth Fundamental Catalogue, " Catalogues of Fundamental Stars ". The Hipparcos catalogue was compiled from the data gathered by the European Space Agency 's astrometric satellite Hipparcos , which

1780-584: The Yale Catalog of Bright Stars , this catalogue contained information on all stars brighter than visual magnitude 6.5 in the Harvard Revised Photometry Catalogue . The list was revised in 1983 with the publication of a supplement that listed additional stars down to magnitude 7.1. The catalogue detailed each star's coordinates, proper motions , photometric data, spectral types , and other useful information. The last printed version of

1869-452: The Babylonians , Greeks , Chinese , Persians , and Arabs . They were sometimes accompanied by a star chart for illustration. Most modern catalogues are available in electronic format and can be freely downloaded from space agencies' data centres . The largest is being compiled from the spacecraft Gaia and thus far has over a billion stars. Completeness and accuracy are described by

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1958-594: The Cape Photographic Durchmusterung (450,000 stars, 1896), compiled at the Cape, South Africa, covers declinations −18 to −90. Astronomers preferentially use the HD designation (see next entry) of a star, as that catalogue also gives spectroscopic information, but as the Durchmusterungs cover more stars they occasionally fall back on the older designations when dealing with one not found in Draper. Unfortunately,

2047-495: The Hubble Space Telescope program. The first version of the catalogue was produced in the late 1980s by digitizing photographic plates and contained about 20 million stars, out to about magnitude 15. The latest version of this catalogue contains information for 945,592,683 stars, out to magnitude 21. The latest version continues to be used to accurately position the Hubble Space Telescope . The PPM Star Catalogue (1991)

2136-479: The Maragheh observatory 's Zij-i Ilkhani (1272), and Ulugh Beg 's Zij-i Sultani (1437). Other famous Arabic star catalogues include Alfraganus ' A compendium of the science of stars (850) which corrected Ptolemy's Almagest ; and al-Sufi 's Book of Fixed Stars (964) which described observations of the stars , their positions, magnitudes , brightness, and colour , drawings for each constellation , and

2225-514: The Naval Observatory server. The entire 50GB compressed catalog can be downloaded via BitTorrent using instructions from Skychart . The Naval Observatory is currently working on B2 and C variants of the USNO catalogue series. The Guide Star Catalog is an online catalogue of stars produced for the purpose of accurately positioning and identifying stars satisfactory for use as guide stars by

2314-502: The Paris Observatory and so it describes mostly northern stars. This catalogue contained the positions and magnitudes of 47,390 stars, out to magnitude 9, and was the most complete catalogue up to that time. A significant reworking of this catalogue by followers of Lalande in 1846 added reference numbers to the stars that are used to refer to some of these stars to this day. The decent accuracy of this catalogue kept it in common use as

2403-456: The Tablet of Destinies and Lugale . Enlil's name comes from ancient Sumerian EN (𒂗), meaning "lord" and LÍL (𒆤), the meaning of which is contentious, and which has sometimes been interpreted as meaning winds as a weather phenomenon (making Enlil a weather and sky god, "Lord Wind" or "Lord Storm"), or alternatively as signifying a spirit or phantom whose presence may be felt as stirring of

2492-654: The Zhou dynasty ( c.  1050 – 256 BC) which provide star names include the Zuo Zhuan , the Shi Jing , and the " Canon of Yao " (堯典) in the Book of Documents . The Lüshi Chunqiu written by the Qin statesman Lü Buwei ( d.  235 BC ) provides most of the names for the twenty-eight mansions (i.e. asterisms across the ecliptic belt of the celestial sphere used for constructing

2581-540: The calendar ). An earlier lacquerware chest found in the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng (interred in 433 BC) contains a complete list of the names of the twenty-eight mansions . Star catalogues are traditionally attributed to Shi Shen and Gan De , two rather obscure Chinese astronomers who may have been active in the 4th century BC of the Warring States period (403–221 BC). The Shi Shen astronomy (石申天文, Shi Shen tienwen)

2670-481: The celestial equator , twelve for " Ea " south of that, and twelve for " Enlil " to the north. The Mul.Apin lists, dated to sometime before the Neo-Babylonian Empire (626–539 BC), are direct textual descendants of the "Three Stars Each" lists and their constellation patterns show similarities to those of later Greek civilization . In Ancient Greece , the astronomer and mathematician Eudoxus laid down

2759-603: The realm of the gods to seek counsel from Enlil directly. In the Old, Middle, and Late Babylonian myth of Anzû and the Tablet of Destinies , the Anzû , a giant, monstrous bird, betrays Enlil and steals the Tablet of Destinies , a sacred clay tablet belonging to Enlil that grants him his authority, while Enlil is preparing for a bath. The rivers dry up and the gods are stripped of their powers. The gods send Adad , Girra , and Shara to defeat

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2848-405: The "man of the gate". Ninlil demands to know where Enlil has gone, but Enlil, still impersonating the gatekeeper, refuses to answer. He then seduces Ninlil and impregnates her with Nergal , the god of death. The same scenario repeats, only this time Enlil instead impersonates the "man of the river of the nether world, the man-devouring river"; once again, he seduces Ninlil and impregnates her with

2937-503: The "mooring-rope" of heaven and earth, meaning that it was seen as "a channel of communication between earth and heaven". A hymn written during the reign of Ur-Nammu , the founder of the Third Dynasty of Ur , describes the E-kur in great detail, stating that its gates were carved with scenes of Imdugud , a lesser deity sometimes shown as a giant bird, slaying a lion and an eagle snatching up

3026-452: The 3rd century BC, the Greek astronomers Timocharis of Alexandria and Aristillus created another star catalogue. Hipparchus ( c.  190  – c.  120 BC ) completed his star catalogue in 129 BC, the earliest known attempt to map the entire sky, which he compared to Timocharis ' and discovered that the longitude of the stars had changed over time. This led him to determine

3115-538: The Anzû, but all of them fail. Finally, Ea proposes that the gods should send Ninurta, Enlil's son. Ninurta successfully defeats the Anzû and returns the Tablet of Destinies to his father. As a reward, Ninurta is granted a prominent seat on the council of the gods. A badly damaged text from the Neo-Assyrian Period (911–612 BC) describes Marduk leading his army of Anunnaki into the sacred city of Nippur and causing

3204-456: The Babylonian national god Marduk . Enlil plays a vital role in the ancient near eastern cosmology ; he separates An (heaven) from Ki (earth), thus making the world habitable for humans. In the Sumerian flood myth Eridu Genesis , Enlil rewards Ziusudra with immortality for having survived the flood and, in the Babylonian flood myth, Enlil is the cause of the flood himself, having sent

3293-588: The Bright Star Catalogue was the 4th revised edition, released in 1982. The 5th edition is in electronic form and is available online. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory catalogue was compiled in 1966 from various previous astrometric catalogues, and contains only the stars to about ninth magnitude for which accurate proper motions were known. There is considerable overlap with the Henry Draper catalogue, but any star lacking motion data at that time

3382-515: The English astronomer John Flamsteed 's Historia coelestis Britannica (1725). It kept the genitive-of-the-constellation rule for the back end of his catalogue names, but used numbers instead of the Greek alphabet for the front half. Examples include 61 Cygni and 47 Ursae Majoris . Bayer and Flamsteed covered only a few thousand stars between them. In theory, full-sky catalogues try to list every star in

3471-590: The Grand Historian by Sima Qian (145–86 BC) and contains the "schools" of Shi Shen and Gan De's work (i.e. the different constellations they allegedly focused on for astrological purposes). Sima's catalogue—the Book of Celestial Offices (天官書 Tianguan shu)—includes some 90 constellations, the stars therein named after temples , ideas in philosophy , locations such as markets and shops, and different people such as farmers and soldiers . For his Spiritual Constitution of

3560-551: The Sumerian origin of Enlil. They have questioned the true meaning of the name, and identified Enlil with the Eblaite word I-li-lu . As noted by Manfred Krebernik and M. P. Streck; Enlil being referred to as Kur-gal (the Great Mountain) in Sumerian texts suggests he might have originated in eastern Mesopotamia. Enlil who sits broadly on the white dais, on the lofty dais, who perfects the decrees of power, lordship, and princeship,

3649-518: The Universe (靈憲, Ling Xian) of 120 AD, the astronomer Zhang Heng (78–139 AD) compiled a star catalogue comprising 124 constellations. Chinese constellation names were later adopted by the Koreans and Japanese . A large number of star catalogues were published by Muslim astronomers in the medieval Islamic world . These were mainly Zij treatises, including Arzachel 's Tables of Toledo (1087),

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3738-555: The air, or possibly as representing a partial Semitic loanword rather than a Sumerian word at all. Enlil's name is not a genitive construction, suggesting that Enlil was seen as the personification of LÍL rather than merely the cause of LÍL. Piotr Steinkeller has written that the meaning of LÍL may not actually be a clue to a specific divine domain of Enlil's, whether storms, spirits, or otherwise, since Enlil may have been "a typical universal god [...] without any specific domain." Piotr Steinkeller and Piotr Michalowski have doubts about

3827-416: The co-ordinates in 1900 epoch, the secular variation, the proper motion, the weighted average absolute parallax and its standard error, the number of parallax observations, quality of interagreement of the different values, the visual magnitude, and various cross-identifications with other catalogues. Auxiliary information, including UBV photometry, MK spectral types, data on the variability and binary nature of

3916-553: The early releases also miss some stars, especially fainter stars located in dense star fields. Data from every data release can be accessed at the Gaia archive . Gaia DR1, the first data release based on 14 months of observations made through September 2015, took place on 13 September 2016. The data release includes positions and magnitudes in a single photometric band for 1.1 billion stars using only Gaia data, positions, parallaxes, and proper motions for more than 2 million stars based on

4005-450: The earth-gods bow down in fear before him, the heaven-gods humble themselves before him... Enlil was the patron god of the Sumerian city-state of Nippur and his main center of worship was the Ekur temple located there. The name of the temple literally means "Mountain House" in ancient Sumerian. The Ekur was believed to have been built and established by Enlil himself. It was believed to be

4094-453: The entire celestial sphere without burdening too many institutions, the sky was divided among 20 observatories, by declination zones. Each observatory exposed and measured the plates of its zone, using a standardized telescope (a "normal astrograph ") so each plate photographed had a similar scale of approximately 60 arcsecs/mm. The U.S. Naval Observatory took over custody of the catalogue, now in its 2000.2 edition. First published in 1930 as

4183-476: The faintest limiting magnitude V (largest number) and the accuracy of the positions . From their existing records, it is known that the ancient Egyptians recorded the names of only a few identifiable constellations and a list of thirty-six decans that were used as a star clock . The Egyptians called the circumpolar star "the star that cannot perish" and, although they made no known formal star catalogues, they nonetheless created extensive star charts of

4272-406: The first edition. Numbers with a decimal point were used to insert new star systems for the second edition without destroying the desired order (by right ascension ). This catalogue is referred to as CNS2, although this name is never used in catalogue numbers. Numbers in the range 9001–9850 ( Wo numbers) are from the supplement Numbers in the ranges 1000–1294 and 2001–2159 ( GJ numbers) are from

4361-589: The first known description of the Andromeda Galaxy . Many stars are still known by their Arabic names (see List of Arabic star names ). The Motul Dictionary , compiled in the 16th century by an anonymous author (although attributed to Fray Antonio de Ciudad Real ), contains a list of stars originally observed by the ancient Mayas . The Maya Paris Codex also contains symbols for different constellations which were represented by mythological beings. Two systems introduced in historical catalogues remain in use to

4450-540: The first value of the precession of the equinoxes . In the 2nd century, Ptolemy ( c.  90  – c.  186 AD ) of Roman Egypt published a star catalogue as part of his Almagest , which listed 1,022 stars visible from Alexandria . Ptolemy's catalogue was based almost entirely on an earlier one by Hipparchus. It remained the standard star catalogue in the Western and Arab worlds for over eight centuries. The Islamic astronomer al-Sufi updated it in 964, and

4539-559: The flood to exterminate the human race, who made too much noise and prevented him from sleeping. The myth of Enlil and Ninlil is about Enlil's serial seduction of the goddess Ninlil in various guises, resulting in the conception of the moon-god Nanna and the Underworld deities Nergal , Ninazu , and Enbilulu . Enlil was regarded as the inventor of the mattock and the patron of agriculture. Enlil also features prominently in several myths involving his son Ninurta , including Anzû and

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4628-471: The flood, seeking to annihilate every living thing on earth because the humans, who are vastly overpopulated, make too much noise and prevent him from sleeping. In this version of the story, the hero is Utnapishtim , who is warned ahead of time by Ea , the Babylonian equivalent of Enki, that the flood is coming. The flood lasts for seven days; when it ends, Ishtar , who had mourned the destruction of humanity, promises Utnapishtim that Enlil will never cause

4717-595: The god Ninazu . Finally, Enlil impersonates the " man of the boat "; once again, he seduces Ninlil and impregnates her with Enbilulu , the "inspector of the canals". The story of Enlil's courtship with Ninlil is primarily a genealogical myth invented to explain the origins of the moon-god Nanna, as well as the various gods of the Underworld, but it is also, to some extent, a coming-of-age story describing Enlil and Ninlil's emergence from adolescence into adulthood. The story also explains Ninlil's role as Enlil's consort; in

4806-471: The god. Next, he sacrifices an ox and a sheep in honor of Utu. At this point, the text breaks off again. When it picks back up, Enlil and An are in the midst of declaring Ziusudra immortal as an honor for having managed to survive the flood. The remaining portion of the tablet after this point is destroyed. In the later Akkadian version of the flood story, recorded in the Epic of Gilgamesh , Enlil actually causes

4895-465: The gods of Eshumesha and sends his messenger Neretagmil to alert Nabu , the god of literacy. When the Eshumesha gods hear Nabu speak, they come out of their temple to search for him. Marduk defeats the Eshumesha gods and takes 360 of them as prisoners of war, including Enlil himself. Enlil protests that the Eshumesha gods are innocent, so Marduk puts them on trial before the Anunnaki. The text ends with

4984-642: The letters SAO, followed by a number. The numbers are assigned following 18 ten-degree bands in the sky, with stars sorted by right ascension within each band. USNO-B1.0 is an all-sky catalogue created by research and operations astrophysicists at the U.S. Naval Observatory (as developed at the United States Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station ), that presents positions, proper motions, magnitudes in various optical passbands, and star/galaxy estimators for 1,042,618,261 objects derived from 3,643,201,733 separate observations. The data

5073-564: The mattock into existence and decrees its fate. The mattock is described as gloriously beautiful; it is made of pure gold and its head is carved from lapis lazuli . Enlil gives the tool over to the humans, who use it to build cities, subjugate their people, and pull up weeds. Enlil was believed to aid in the growth of plants. The Sumerian poem Enlil Chooses the Farmer–God (ETCSL 5.3.3 ) describes how Enlil, hoping "to establish abundance and prosperity", creates two gods Emesh and Enten ,

5162-423: The money required to finance it. HD numbers are widely used today for stars which have no Bayer or Flamsteed designation. Stars numbered 1–225300 are from the original catalogue and are numbered in order of right ascension for the 1900.0 epoch . Stars in the range 225301–359083 are from the 1949 extension of the catalogue. The notation HDE can be used for stars in this extension, but they are usually denoted HD as

5251-566: The name "Elil" and the Hurrians syncretized him with their own god Kumarbi . In one Hurrian ritual, Enlil and Apantu are invoked as "the father and mother of Išḫara ". Enlil is also invoked alongside Ninlil as a member of "the mighty and firmly established gods ". During the Kassite Period ( c. 1592–1155 BC), Nippur briefly managed to regain influence in the region and Enlil rose to prominence once again. From around 1300 BC onwards, Enlil

5340-609: The night sky which adorn the coffins and ceilings of tomb chambers. Although the ancient Sumerians were the first to record the names of constellations on clay tablets , the earliest known star catalogues were compiled by the ancient Babylonians of Mesopotamia in the late 2nd millennium BC, during the Kassite Period ( c.  1531  – c.  1155 BC ). They are better known by their Assyrian-era name 'Three Stars Each'. These star catalogues, written on clay tablets , listed thirty-six stars: twelve for " Anu " along

5429-629: The northern sky and some of the south (being compiled from the Bonn observatory), this was then supplemented by the Südliche Durchmusterung (SD), which covers stars between declinations −1 and −23 degrees (1886, 120,000 stars). It was further supplemented by the Cordoba Durchmusterung (580,000 stars), which began to be compiled at Córdoba, Argentina in 1892 under the initiative of John M. Thome and covers declinations −22 to −90. Lastly,

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5518-454: The numbering ensures that there can be no ambiguity. The Catalogue astrographique (Astrographic Catalogue) was part of the international Carte du Ciel programme designed to photograph and measure the positions of all stars brighter than magnitude 11.0. In total, over 4.6 million stars were observed, many as faint as 13th magnitude. This project was started in the late 19th century. The observations were made between 1891 and 1950. To observe

5607-474: The offer. Burnham worked at Lick Observatory for four years starting in 1888. After leaving in 1892, he revised the manuscript of his catalog for five years; the Carnegie Institute published it nine years later. By the time Burnham retired from Yerkes Observatory , he had accumulated material for a revision of his catalogue. This eventually formed part of the 1932 Aitken Double Star Catalogue (ADS),

5696-526: The other gods could not look upon him. The same hymn also states that, without Enlil, civilization could not exist. Enlil's epithets include titles such as "the Great Mountain" and "King of the Foreign Lands". Enlil is also sometimes described as a "raging storm", a "wild bull", and a "merchant". The Mesopotamians envisioned him as a creator, a father, a king, and the supreme lord of the universe. He

5785-402: The poem, Ninlil declares, "As Enlil is your master, so am I also your mistress!" The story is also historically significant because, if the current interpretation of it is correct, it is the oldest known myth in which a god changes shape. In the Sumerian version of the flood story (ETCSL 1.7.4 ), the causes of the flood are unclear because the portion of the tablet recording the beginning of

5874-463: The present day. The first system comes from the German astronomer Johann Bayer 's Uranometria , published in 1603 and regarding bright stars. These are given a Greek letter followed by the genitive case of the constellation in which they are located; examples are Alpha Centauri or Gamma Cygni . The major problem with Bayer's naming system was the number of letters in the Greek alphabet (24). It

5963-449: The sky. There are, however, billions of stars resolvable by 21st century telescopes , so this is an impossible goal; with this kind of catalog, an attempt is generally made to get every star brighter than a given magnitude . Jérôme Lalande published the Histoire céleste française in 1801, which contained an extensive star catalog, among other things. The observations made were made from

6052-464: The star positions were redetermined by Ulugh Beg in 1437, but it was not fully superseded until the appearance of the thousand-star catalogue of Tycho Brahe in 1598. The ancient Vedic and other scriptures of India were very well aware of the astronomical positions and constellations. Both Mahabharata and Ramayana provide references to various events in terms of the planetary positions and constellations of that time. The Planetary positions at

6141-581: The stars, orbits when available, and miscellaneous information to aid in determining the reliability of the data are also listed. A common way of detecting nearby stars is to look for relatively high proper motions . Several catalogues exist, of which we'll mention a few. The Ross and Wolf catalogues pioneered the domain: Willem Jacob Luyten later produced a series of catalogues: L – Luyten, Proper motion stars and White dwarfs LFT – Luyten Five-Tenths catalogue LHS – Luyten Half-Second catalogue Enlil Enlil , later known as Elil and Ellil ,

6230-400: The story has been destroyed. Somehow, a mortal known as Ziusudra manages to survive the flood, likely through the help of the god Enki . The tablet begins in the middle of the description of the flood. The flood lasts for seven days and seven nights before it subsides. Then, Utu , the god of the Sun, emerges. Ziusudra opens a window in the side of the boat and falls down prostrate before

6319-497: The successor to the BDS. Star catalogue A star catalogue is an astronomical catalogue that lists stars . In astronomy , many stars are referred to simply by catalogue numbers. There are a great many different star catalogues which have been produced for different purposes over the years, and this article covers only some of the more frequently quoted ones. Star catalogues were compiled by many different ancient people, including

6408-492: The supplement The range 1000–1294 represents nearby stars, while 2001–2159 represents suspected nearby stars. In the literature, the GJ numbers are sometimes retroactively extended to the Gl numbers (since there is no overlap). For example, Gliese 436 can be interchangeably referred to as either Gl 436 or GJ 436. Numbers in the range 3001–4388 are from Although this version of the catalogue

6497-575: The symbol of a horned cap, which consisted of up to seven superimposed pairs of ox-horns. Such crowns were an important symbol of divinity; gods had been shown wearing them ever since the third millennium BC. The horned cap remained consistent in form and meaning from the earliest days of Sumerian prehistory up until the time of the Persian conquest and beyond. The Sumerians had a complex numerological system, in which certain numbers were believed to hold special ritual significance. Within this system, Enlil

6586-526: The third data release, EDR3 (Early Data Release 3) was released on 3 December 2020. It is based on 34 months of observations and consists of improved positions, parallaxes, and proper motions of over 1.8 billion objects The full DR3, published in June 2022, includes the EDR3 data plus Solar System data; variability information; results for non-single stars, for quasars, and for extended objects; astrophysical parameters; and

6675-554: The time of Mahabharata war has been given comprehensively. A very interesting and exhaustive discussion about the planetary positions along with specific name of constellations appears in a paper by R N Iyengar in the Indian Journal of History of Science . The earliest known inscriptions for Chinese star names were written on oracle bones and date to the Shang dynasty ( c.  1600  – c.  1050 BC ). Sources dating from

6764-563: The twenty-fourth century BC, when the importance of the god An began to wane. During this time period, Enlil and An are frequently invoked together in inscriptions. Enlil remained the supreme god in Mesopotamia throughout the Amorite Period, with Amorite monarchs proclaiming Enlil as the source of their legitimacy. Enlil's importance began to wane after the Babylonian king Hammurabi conquered Sumer. The Babylonians worshipped Enlil under

6853-485: Was a continuous, symmetrical circle around the north celestial pole , but those of An and Enki were believed to intersect at various points. Enlil was associated with the constellation Boötes . The main source of information about Sumerian creation mythology is the prologue to the epic poem Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld ( ETCSL 1.8.1.4 ), which briefly describes the process of creation: originally, there

6942-701: Was a stimulus to double star observation. The BDS was compiled by Sherburne Wesley Burnham , who worked on it sporadically for 36 years, starting in 1870. He first submitted it to the Smithsonian Institution , but it was rejected. In 1874, it was scheduled to be printed at the United States Naval Observatory , but the typesetting was interrupted midway and the type destroyed. In 1886 the Smithsonian changed its mind and offered to publish it, but Burnham had become discouraged and did not accept

7031-492: Was also known as "Nunamnir" and is referred to in at least one text as the "East Wind and North Wind". Kings regarded Enlil as a model ruler and sought to emulate his example. Enlil was said to be supremely just and intolerant towards evil. Rulers from all over Sumer would travel to Enlil's temple in Nippur to be legitimized. They would return Enlil's favor by devoting lands and precious objects to his temple as offerings. Nippur

7120-426: Was associated with the number fifty, which was considered sacred to him. Enlil was part of a triad of deities, which also included An and Enki. These three deities together were the embodiment of all the fixed stars in the night sky. An was identified with all the stars of the equatorial sky , Enlil with those of the northern sky , and Enki with those of the southern sky . The path of Enlil's celestial orbit

7209-533: Was easy to run out of letters before running out of stars needing names, particularly for large constellations such as Argo Navis . Bayer extended his lists up to 67 stars by using lower-case Roman letters ("a" through "z") then upper-case ones ("A" through "Q"). Few of those designations have survived. It is worth mentioning, however, as it served as the starting point for variable star designations , which start with "R" through "Z", then "RR", "RS", "RT"..."RZ", "SS", "ST"..."ZZ" and beyond. The second system comes from

7298-420: Was obtained from scans of 7,435 Schmidt plates taken for the various sky surveys during the last 50 years. USNO-B1.0 is believed to provide all-sky coverage, completeness down to V = 21, 0.2 arcsecond astrometric accuracy at J2000.0 , 0.3 magnitude photometric accuracy in up to five colors, and 85% accuracy for distinguishing stars from non-stellar objects. USNO-B is now followed by NOMAD ; both can be found on

7387-409: Was only Nammu , the primeval sea. Then, Nammu gave birth to An , the sky, and Ki , the earth. An and Ki mated with each other, causing Ki to give birth to Enlil. Enlil separated An from Ki and carried off the earth as his domain, while An carried off the sky. Enlil marries his mother, Ki, and from this union all the plant and animal life on earth is produced. Enlil and Ninlil (ETCSL 1.2.1 )

7476-477: Was operational from 1989 to 1993. The catalogue was published in June 1997 and contains 118,218 stars; an updated version with re-processed data was published in 2007. It is particularly notable for its parallax measurements, which are considerably more accurate than those produced by ground-based observations. The Gaia catalogues are based on observations made by the Gaia space telescope. They are released in stages that contain increasing amounts of information;

7565-408: Was published in the period 1918–1924. It covers the whole sky down to about ninth or tenth magnitude, and is notable as the first large-scale attempt to catalogue spectral types of stars. The catalogue was compiled by Annie Jump Cannon and her co-workers at Harvard College Observatory under the supervision of Edward Charles Pickering , and was named in honour of Henry Draper , whose widow donated

7654-445: Was ritually laid out before the god's cult statue in the form of a feast, was believed to be Enlil's daily meal, but, after the ritual, it would be distributed among his priests. These priests were also responsible for changing the cult statue's clothing. The Sumerians envisioned Enlil as a benevolent, fatherly deity, who watches over humanity and cares for their well-being. One Sumerian hymn describes Enlil as so glorious that even

7743-513: Was syncretized with the Assyrian national god Aššur , who was the most important deity in the Assyrian pantheon. Then, in 1230 BC, the Elamites attacked Nippur and the city fell into decline, taking the cult of Enlil along with it. Approximately one hundred years later, Enlil's role as the head of the pantheon was given to Marduk , the national god of the Babylonians. Enlil was represented by

7832-428: Was termed "preliminary", it is still the current one as of March 2006 , and is referred to as CNS3. It lists a total of 3,803 stars. Most of these stars already had GJ numbers, but there were also 1,388 which were not numbered. The need to give these 1,388 some name has resulted in them being numbered 3001–4388 ( NN numbers, for "no name"), and data files of this catalogue now usually include these numbers. An example of

7921-494: Was the only Sumerian city-state that never built a palace; this was intended to symbolize the city's importance as the center of the cult of Enlil by showing that Enlil himself was the city's king. Even during the Babylonian Period, when Marduk had superseded Enlil as the supreme god, Babylonian kings still traveled to the holy city of Nippur to seek recognition of their right to rule. Enlil first rose to prominence during

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