Publisher's Synopsis
Some well-known and high profile groups such as the Astronomical League have created observing programs specifically intended to encourage amateur astronomers to observe asterisms and some amateur astronomers have invested large amounts of energy and enthusiasm in looking for asterisms to add to the ever-growing catalogue of these objects. It is disappointing that some researchers have perhaps taken themselves and their desire to find new objects rather too seriously. Amateur astronomy is supposed to be fun and those people seeking to impose a rigid framework on what constitutes an asterism worthy of "catalogue status" need to remind themselves that any catalogue they create is entirely unofficial. As my contribution to the genre I wrote a piece of software that allows me to hunt for asterisms. The minimum number of stars to be in the asterism, the minimum brightness of the stars making up the "design" and the angular size of the asterism can all be pre-selected. The astrometric (positional) and photometric data used by the software was obtained from the UCAC4 catalogue. Over 3,500 asterisms are included in this collection. Some are unquestionably more visually attractive than others but any one of them will make an interesting diversion from the endlessly recycled objects that alternative publications continue to list!
