Flamsteed numbers

Identification numbers assigned to stars listed in Historia coelestis Britannica by John Flamsteed (1646-1719). In the official version of the catalogue, published posthumously in 1725, the numbers are not included explicitly. However, they do appear in a preliminary version published by Edmond Halley and Isaac Newton in 1712 without Flamsteed's approval. Few copies of this version survive because Flamsteed, greatly angered at the action of Halley and Newton, destroyed many of them. The numbers were allocated by constellation and in order of right ascension. They were subsequently used by other cataloguers, including John Bevis (1750) and J.-J. de Lalande (1783). The Flamsteed numbers are still commonly used for stars that do not also have a Greek Bayer letter designation.