Which star is which?

[Gazabone]

Reading through the new S@N mag I've hit a confusion with Cassiopeia. Looking at the constellation as the letter W, which star is Navi? I've always thought its epsilon Cas (first star on the left of the W) but S@N say it's the middle one of the W, gamma Cas. Looking at different apps star maps etc, it seems there's a mix of opinion.

So, what's in a name?.......until you come to use Navi to align a goto scope which I have done fairly regularly. Next time I won't use Navi for alignment but once it's aligned I'll ask it to point to Navi and see which one it goes for.

[Tinker1947]

Download Stellarium and it will show you.......

http://www.stellarium.org/

[Walshie79]

Let's see if I can remember it from memory- Caph is the one on the right nearest to Cepheus, then Schedar, then Gamma (which has the recently made up name Navi), then Ruchbah, then Segin is the fainter one on the left. It isn't as easily remembered as Ursa Major because Beta and Alpha are reversed if you do it by increased RA.

I think I've also see Gamma called Tsih (?), something's telling me there's a star in Bootes called Segin as well.

[Charic]

Navi is the middle Star ( Gamma Cassiopeiae) as pointed out above

[Dave In Vermont]

+2 for Stellarium link. And there are user's guides available also - which you will need. Stellarium is a very BIG software-program! It is what is known as a planetarium-program. I prefer star-charts, so take your pick. It can be programed to work the way you wish it to. More stars, less stars, toss in nebulae and galaxies, comets, man-made satellites,and just about anything out there. All in a beautifully accurate way set for your location. It's very easy to print star-charts to carry with you if you can't haul a computer.

A similar program can easily cost well-over £100 - and not be as good - but Stellarium is FREE! And it's truly one of the very best! So here we go:

Here is their Wiki-based guide -

http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Stellarium_User_Guide

And the newest .Pdf -

http://barry.sarcasmogerdes.com/stellarium/stellarium_user_guide-new.pdf

And support is available. Ask questions, read other people's questions, so forth -

https://answers.launchpad.net/stellarium

And yes, it will tell you the names of all the brighter (and, thus, named) stars out there. As well as represent the constellations from a wide variety of different cultures. Mine is set to Lakota - it's beautiful! And I'll leave a screenshot of how I have my copy set up.

Enjoy!

Dave