Spring and Early Summer Star Chart

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Directions

A work in progress that shows what you are trying to create:

The above work in progress shows how to label the right ascension and declination axes, and shows a good legend for the stars of various magnitudes. This chart will have one star of magnitude 0, two of magnitude 1, thirteen of magnitude 2, and many more of magnitude 3.

You should probably put the names and symbols in very lightly until you have placed all the stars, because you will have to move lots of them as you keep adding stars. Do everything in pencil and have a good eraser standing by.

By the way, you are only doing the stars from right ascension 8h to 16h and declination -52.5° to +52.5°. This is roughly 1/4 of the sky visible at latitude 38° throughout the year. The part of the sky you are doing includes the stars you would be looking at when facing south on May 1 at around 10pm (daylight savings time) in the evening. (Deep Springs is always on daylight savings time.)

In other words, you are only doing the stars with a checkmark in the 8h-16h column.

The Star List

The Simbad database query results needed to create the chart.

Additional Information

Additional Information about Star Charting from the Heavenly Mathematics course resources.