Hi Mark and All:

I found a handy calculator online to transform the Right Ascension given in hours in decimal time: http://www.springfrog.com/converter/decimal-time.htm
All you have to do after that is to transform the result obtained in hours.
So, as I supposed that the star was at 13hs 32? I filled the provided space with this number.
Then I pressed the button "convert hours minutes and second in decimal time" and I got: 13.533055555555556
I divided the number by 15 and I got 0,90220370.
Now I multiplied the above result by 60= 5413222200
Simplifying, I think the result( if I did it right) is 0hs 54?

I don?t know if I did it right, as I said, but if I did, how to convert this last number into a position on the ecliptic?

Sorry to bother you!:oops:


Cl?lia

I am so glad I found this thread as the longitude method V parans has bothered me for some time. I have been working with the fixed stars for three years and initially I was a big fan of Brady's because there aren't many modern interpretations of the fixed stars out there.
However I have never gelled with using parans. Mainly because if I want to do a chart about, say the current new moon, I would have to do a chart for every major city on earth for it to be meaningful. The late Diana Rosenberg uses "starsets" which look to be an interesting way of working, but her book is not out in the UK yet. If anyone has read it I'd be interested to know if she goes into the history of projected ecliptic/celestial equatorial degrees at all.

Can anyone answer these questions for me as there is so little information on the use of fixed stars on the web.

1) Is there an english translation of Ulagh Begs work anywhere? I have googled and just found the very beautiful arabic text. Is it purely an astronomical work or does it go into astrology and meaning of the fixed stars?

2) What is the difference between using ecliptic and equatorial measurements for the fixed stars in minutes? Are they really the same?

My pet peeve is that Brady is really seen as the authority on fixed stars and she is very vocal about her condemnation of Ptolemy's PED method. But if Ptolemy's tables have really have been found to be inaccurate why on earth did she put tables at the back of her own book (which recommends the use of parans) of Ptolemy's positions rather than the updated and more accurate measurements of Ulagh Beg? It almost seems to be a deliberate red herring and attempt to fudge all understanding of the longitude method.

Then we have Brady referencing "Anonymous of 379" who recommends only using stars near to the ecliptic for longtitude method and parans for those far. If that was the case then why do all the modern day fixed stars writers (Robson, Ebertins etc) include the meaning of stars like Vega, Phecda, Phact, Polaris which are of high latitude? It doesn't make sense. They do not mention using parans at all.

I don't mean to bash Brady as I have a great respect for her work. But she is such a authority in this field that I think she has put a lot of people off using Fixed stars due to the arguments over which method to use. Even her paran system is different from Solar Fires which means you would have to buy her software "Starlight" to use it.....

Constellation of words is a wonderful resource, but even they have written on some of the stars in Ursa Minor (quoting the Ebertins) that they may not have a strong effect because they are too far off the ecliptic. I'm inclined to favour the stars closer to the ecliptic because of all this confusion