Hi Gary,

Looking at GSC 2296 202 in DSS, it appears to be a double star,
about 8" apart. GSC identified it as a single star, and got a horribly
confused magnitude for it.

By default, if Guide sees a mag 7 or brighter star with no Tycho-2
counterpart, it figures it must be a "bogus" star, and doesn't show
it; anything that bright really should have been picked up in Tycho-2.
Were I to do it today, I'd probably set that to a limit of magnitude
9, or maybe even fainter. (The only problem being that one might wipe
out a perfectly valid star or two if you went faint enough.)

You can persuade Guide to omit mag 7 through 9 GSC stars that lack
Tycho-2 counterparts, by hitting Alt-J and entering this text:

GSC_BRIGHT_LIMIT=9

As Larry Wood points out, the fact that an object is IDed in GSC
isn't at all definitive. I'm very much looking forward to the
completion of UCAC-3, which will provide a much more precise and
blunder-free full-sky catalog. (If it's ever released!)

-- Bill