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Reading the Position: Taurus 10 Degrees 29 Minutes, and a Star Listed Twice

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Reading the Position: Taurus 10 Degrees 29 Minutes, and a Star Listed Twice

The atlas records this star at Taurus 10 degrees 29 minutes, projected from a position in Andromeda well north of the ecliptic.

That figure is shared. Adhil is recorded at exactly the same sign, degree and minute, in the same constellation, and two distinct stars agreeing to the arcminute is not something that happens by chance in a list of fifty seven. The two entries are one star, entered twice under two spellings of a name, and the two records agreeing to the arcminute is what shows it. This is an ordinary hazard of the modern fixed-star lists, which were assembled by successive compilers copying one another and absorbing variant transliterations of the same Arabic name as though they were separate objects.

On precession, the longitude is a dated quantity: a fixed star gains about fifty seconds of arc a year, one degree in roughly seventy two years. Taking the value for epoch 2000, the star entered Taurus in the middle of the thirteenth century and will reach Gemini in about fourteen hundred years.

Neither the duplication nor the drift is a defect in the record so much as a property of it, and both are worth knowing before the entry is used.

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