Star Catalogues and Photographic Charts

Summary

The catalogues of stars are numerous, as will be seen by referring to the list given in Chambers' “Handbook of Descriptive Astronomy,” where 170 are enumerated between that by Hipparchus in the year b.c. 128 and the year a.d. 1876; besides these there are catalogues of nebulæ, and atlases or charts of stars.

In considering these records one is impelled to ask the questions–Have these vast stores of computative and descriptive literature, the product of great energy expended in physical and mechanical operations, and of much thought, been utilized in the advancement of astronomical knowledge to a degree commensurate with the labour and cost of their production?

Or, have the astronomers been deterred from undertaking the work of correlation, on a comprehensive scale, because they know that there is a considerable margin of probable error in all these records–particularly in those of earlier date than the middle of the present century–they therefore judge it would be unprofitable to devote their time to making the necessary examinations. They know that when they find differences to exist in the records, it would be uncertain whether they were objective, or were only the result of human errors.

In my own experience I have found differences to exist between photographs and carefully prepared modern charts of stars–differences in the position angles, in distances, in the magnitudes of the stars and in the structure and extent of nebulosities, which were most probably due to errors in charting.