Hi all,

> You _can_ add names so that they'll be recognized by the "Go To...
> Common Name" function. Edit the file 'objects.nam' and you'll see
> a little cross-reference table Guide uses. So far, it contains three

Cool. I've got a database of deep sky objects with nicknames which I could add
to this list. Will post reference to it whenever I find the time to do this, so
that others may pick it up.

> designation. It's case-sensitive, which is why SMC and LMC
> have to appear twice.

I'd suggest making it case-insensitive, to avoid the numerous "Not a valid
object"-messages you'll obviously get from trying to write things right. Or else
you'd have to include entries in lower case, upper case, title case etc.

> For binary stars: Arild is, of course, right in mentioning that
> the WDS is massive overkill. There's no really convenient way
> to 'filter' it, either, since the visibility of a binary is such a complex
> function of separation and relative magnitude.

Agreed. On my future online resource I would like to include the ability to
filter the data for such things as magnitude, separation, mag difference etc.
Even it is very hard to tell beforehand how difficult a pair may be, the
limiting resolving power and magnitude of your telescope/sky do filter out a
tremendous lot of the WDS. I tried this now on an old import I had of WDS.
There's a total of 63,069 systems in the database, filtering for my 4" with
minimum sep of 1.1", primary brighter than 10 and secondary brighter than 12.7,
leaves some 4,574 systems, about 7 % of the total. Obviously a lot of these
systems will be next to impossible given too huge mag difference, but ut gives
an idea.

Best regards,

Arild :)

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