Which star is Atic ?

[peterbolson]

I was looking at the interesting star system Zeta persei last night and see that some sources ( eg the Cambridge DSA, Steele Doppie guide to to the WDSA, Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders ) call this Atic but other sources ( eg Sky Safari plus, Stellarium, Cartes du Ciel, Wikipedia & many googled websites ) label Omicron persei as Atic.

I wondered if anyone knows which is correct ? My inclination is to believe the CDSA but it seems very confusing.

Peter

[acey]

Just to add to the confusion, one generally realiable website gives the name Atik to Xi Persei.

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/M/Menkib.html

Arabic star names mostly come from Al-Sufi's "Book Of Fixed Stars" (written in 964AD), and Al-Atik apparently means shoulder or collarbone, apparently referring to a different star lay-out in which the star would be at the shoulder of a group including the Pleiades (Wikipedia says it is "The shoulder of the Pleiades Responsibility Chandelier", whatever that means). A definitive answer would be to see exactly what Al-Sufi said, so maybe an Arabic-speaking forum member can help out there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arabic_star_names#A

But when it comes to choosing between printed sources (e.g. CDSA) and software (e.g. Stellarium) I would always place greater trust in printed ones, since errors propagate so easily in software.

[acey]

Edit: I misread - the David Darling site doesn't name Xi as Atik but mentions its meaning as "collarbone".