Hello all,

I've gotten a private reply on this subject suggesting that
these designations may be more commonly used in the UK, and maybe
elsewhere in the world, than they are in the US. I may have
been guilty of being "American-centric" without realizing it...
not a good thing, given Guide's heavy use outside the US!

Guide is very much in bug-fix mode only. However, I've found
a way to add the subject feature without really modifying Guide.
(It does have a small downside; see below.)

If you download http://www.projectpluto.com/objects.nam to
your Guide folder (it's about 12 KBytes), you will be able to
use Go To... Object Name and enter designations such as c Psc
or q1 Eri or A Cas, and Guide will locate the star in question.

I added 'objects.nam' some time ago in answer to questions about
why Guide couldn't find certain prominent objects such as the
quasar 3C272 and the Magellanic Clouds. 'objects.nam' simply
contains some designations Guide doesn't understand along with
a variant it _does_ understand. So "SMC" is translated to "NGC 292".

I was able to reformat the CdS list such that Guide will now
convert, say, c Psc to HD 225003.

OK, now the downside: if you enter (for example) T Tau,
which is a variable star designation, Guide will find t Tau,
the Bayer Latin-letter designation. You can get around this by
using Go To... Star... Variable Star; in that function, Guide
assumes whatever you enter is a for-real variable designation.

-- Bill