Stellarium

The star Eta Carinae is not identified

Asked by Duncan Waldron

I'm surprised to see that eta Carinae (the star, not the nebulae) is not identified. An object as bright and significant as this ought to be clearly found - at least until it becomes a supernova... Can this be added?

A screenshot is at http://ausalba.weebly.com/misc.html

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Alexander Wolf
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Best Alexander Wolf (alexwolf) said : 		#1

We can't add Eta Carinae because it don't have designation of Hipparcos catalog

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Duncan Waldron (ozalba) said : 		#2

Thanks Alexander Wolf, that solved my question.

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Duncan Waldron (ozalba) said : 		#3

Your answer surprises me though: why would eta Car not have a Hipparcos designation?

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Khalid AlAjaji (kajaji) said : 		#4

See the following 2 articles on the precision of measurement of the star η Carinae position and Hipparcos catalog:

http://etacar.umn.edu/etainfo/basic/astrometry/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipparcos#Hipparcos_Input_Catalogue

may be this will shed some light on why it was not in the Hipparcos catalog.

If you search Tycho, lower precision than Hipparcos you find it. Tycho search from Simabad:
http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=I%2F259

Hipparcos search:
http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=I%2F311