Talk:Alpha Cassiopeiae

Traditional name

Why was Schedar named Schedar? Is there some special meaning to it?

From Professor Jim Kaler's site: The name "Shedar" comes directly from the Arabic word for "breast," and describes the position of the star in the heart of the ancient Queen. The Queen being Cassiopeia. — RJH 21:53, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Conflicting magnitudes

I've done the best I can to report on the visual magnitude of Alpha Cas versus Beta Cas. Not being an astronomer myself, I don't know how to explain the conflicting data from the various photometric studies reported in SIMBAD versus the more recent van Leeuwen study of 2007. If anyone can clarify this point, it would be greatly appreciated.--Sadalsuud (talk) 14:01, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I haven't checked, but at first glance I imagine the difference is because Hipparcos measured in the H_P (Hipparcos passband) and V_T (Tycho V) bands, which are almost but not quite the same as Johnson V. See Bessel 2000 for a discussion (esp figures 2 and 5). I'll have a more detailed look in the literature at some point in the next few days. Incidentally, why is it so important which exactly is brighter in V? Modest Genius ^talk 16:45, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I suggest adopting V=2.240+-0.002 from ASCC for Alpha Cas. The same catalogue gives V=2.269+-0.003 for Beta Cas. Modest Genius ^talk 18:33, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response. I suppose the question of which star is brighter has little importance in itself. The commitment here, nevertheless, is simply one of accuracy—communicating coherent information so the reader is left with a clear understanding. Also I notice that many Wikipedia articles rank the brightness of stars, as well as Jim Kaler's website, particularly in light of the Bayer designations which were loosely correlated with brightness. Moreover, if this article reports that Caph is the brightest star, and yet the Caph article reports the opposite, confusion results, which of course is inconsistent with Wikipedia's goals.

Either way, I find your explanation useful. I did not know that something so basic as apparent magnitude could be measured differently, leading to conflicting evaluations. As a result I have re-read the article on apparent magnitude only to discover that the subtleties you mention above are not adequately addressed in this article and probably should be. Given that article's high importance and current C status, this will likely be the next area of focus. Thanks.--Sadalsuud (talk) 14:48, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I hadn't realised that the Bessel article was behind a paywall (ADS has it incorrectly marked in green, which is supposed to mean publicly available. It worked fine from my university computer, presumably due to my IP.). There's a freely available copy at [1]. Modest Genius ^talk 17:58, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

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