Hi Stefano, Wolfgang,

I switched from "Bayer" to "Greek" because I got some comments
from people who hadn't heard of the former. But just about everyone
will recognize Greek letters when they see them.

Wolfgang is, of course, quite right that not all Bayer designations
are Greek letters. But Guide only knows about the Greek letter
designations; ask it to find z Pup or G CMi and it will tell you
"Object not found".

This is for two reasons. First, nobody has ever asked for them.
Not once. The Bayer Latin-alphabet designations get almost no use
at all. The second reason is that for a long time, I lacked a
source for these A-Q and a-z designations. There is now a pretty
good cross-index for these designations:

http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/Cat?IV/27

Separately, I've found some references to the "missing" stars,
including a list of dual-designation cases (for example, the star
"normally" known as Beta Tauri was also known as Gamma Aurigae.)
I spent some time typing and reformatting the list and matching
it to more modern catalogs some years back. Just in case anyone
is interested in this list (not very likely, I expect, but I know
there are a few history buffs out there) :

http://www.projectpluto.com/addenda2.txt

I keep meaning to format this properly and send it off to the
folks at CdS for use as an appendix to the above catalog. But I
find it highly unlikely that anyone has ever used Guide to look
for "Gamma Aurigae" or any similar case.

I may add the ability to display and enter these nearly-obsolete
designations to Guide, but it's not a priority item right now.

-- Bill