Why are the Greek letters abbreviated “improperly” in English, instead of being written in Greek?
I’m sure there’s a way to get PHP’s JPEG image creation feature to print out Greek letters, but I haven’t found it yet. As for the improper abbreviations (eg, “alf” for “alpha”), these abbreviations come directly from the star catalog I use. 3.5. How are the stars named? I use the Bayer name (Greek letters) where available, and the Flamsteed number otherwise. If neither of these is available, I use the HR bright star number. 3.6. Why are some fairly bright stars not labelled? All stars with visual magnitude less than 7.00 should be labelled. However, photographic film is more sensitive to blue light than human eyesight. Thus, a blue star that appears fairly bright might in fact have a magnitude greater than 7.00 and thus not be labelled. There are some cases where a faint red star is labelled, but a nearby brighter blue star is not. If these stars were viewed in the sky by a human observer, the blue star would actually appear duller. 3.7. How closely spaced are the grid lines in the ch
