[vsnet-id 736] Re: (fwd) Re: [AAVSO-DIS] WW HYA

[Brian Skiff <Brian.Skiff@lowell.edu>]

>>  you suggested was your opinion or preference, and not
>>  a recommendation from the catalog compilers.

     I am indeed being somewhat prescriptive, mainly by way of reducing
confusion on lists and in the literature.  While it is true that all names
are valid, I disagree that there are not preferred names.  And I would
suggest a rough and somewhat flexible hierarchy for those names.  Thus one
does not refer to a naked-eye star by its USNO-x.x name, but instead by
its Greek-letter assignment.
     Usually all the assorted names can be readily recovered using the
Strasbourg VizieR catalogue query utility in addition to SIMBAD itself.
One can, for instance, find both the IRAS point-source and faint-source
names for WW Hya in VizieR, but only the 'main' point-source name appears
in SIMBAD (which is my reason for suggesting the faint-source ID is not
really necessary, since the compilers have indeed made an implicit
recommendation here).  If there were only a faint-source name, then of course
it would be reasonable to adopt it.  Since either tells you mainly that
there's a 12-micron source in this location, just one of the names is
sufficient.
     Again, what you want (or what _I_ want) for a variable star is the
GCVS designation, the current 'best' coordinates (I can give you a hierarchy
for astrometric catalogues, too!), and the most useful alternate name if
available.  That's about all you need to start exploring the literature
about an object.
     T. S. Eliot, yes?, has written about things with many names (relating
to cats)....

\Brian

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