Uranometria Argentina and the constellation boundaries

PAOLANTONIO, S.; GARCIA, B

Viena

Simposio; Under One Sky: The IAU Centenary Symposium; 2018

The astronomical community accepts the division of the celestial sphere into 88 con-stellations, according to what was established by the IAU. In the first Assembly of 1922 theuse of Latin names for constellations and their abbreviations was resolved. The pending issue ofthe limits of the constellations was discussed in the next meeting and Eug`ene Delporte had theresponsibility for the complete theoretical demarcation. For his work, Delporte took into accountwhat was done half a century earlier in the famous work Uranometr ́ıa Argentina, published in1877 and 1879, under the supervition of Benjamin Gould. In ths presentation we discusse thesituation at the moment when the constellation boundaries were proposed using arcs of RAcircles and parallels of declination, choosing them in such a way that they did not deviate toomuch from those used in the most important celestial atlas of the time, and minimizing thechanges of which constellations stars would belong to.