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Right Ascension

An alternative to sidereal hour angle (SHA) for labeling star longitudes on a star globe. It is used by astronomers and some star maps but rarely by navigators. It uses time units instead of angle units and runs backwards relative to SHA. A star with SHA 300° would have an RA equal to (360° - 300°) x (1 hour/15°) = 4h 00m 00s. The 2102-D uses RA, but this is all sorted out in the Star Finder Book. If you have a star map marked in RA, you can convert it to SHA as: SHA = (24h - RA) x 15°.

Abbreviation:  RA

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