Creative Commons License Copyright © Michael Richmond. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Exercises

    Simple searches:

  1. What sort of object is NGC 7741? Write down its RA and Dec, please.
  2. What sort of object is 3C 144? Bonus points for explaining what "3C" stands for ....
  3. What color are the brightest stars in M3?

    Catalog queries:

  4. How many bright stars -- where "bright" means "B magnitude less than 10.0" -- are there within a one-degree circle centered on NGC 7741? Query the SIMBAD interface to the USNO A2.0 catalog
  5. How many faint stars -- where "faint" means magnitudes between 16 and 22 -- are there per square degree around the variable star R Virginis? (Hint: pick a small region, maybe a circle 3 arcminutes in radius, count the stars, then compute the number per square degree assuming a constant density.)
  6. Use the SIMBAD interface to the Hipparcos Catalogs to run a query on the Hipparcos Main Catalog, I/239/hip_main.


For more information

I love reading about the history of astronomy. One of my favorite books is J. B. Hearnshaw's The Measurement of Starlight, which focuses on the instruments developed in the past two centuries to measure stellar brightness. You can find a copy in the RIT Library.

Creative Commons License Copyright © Michael Richmond. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.