About

The Observer’s Guide to Red Supergiants was created in late 2021, with the goal of providing astronomers of all kinds with a way to discover fascinating RSGs for study. The website places a special emphasis on encouraging spectroscopy, since red supergiants are currently under-monitored spectroscopically, but the Guide’s tools should be useful to anyone who wishes to look at a red supergiant.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank gui-ru Marc Morgan for his help with figuring out the maddening idiosyncrasies of Bootstrap and CSS specificity, introducing me to SCSS, and providing other valuable programming advice throughout the process.

It would have been impossible for me to create the Observer’s Guide to Red Supergiants within only two months (possibly ever!) if it weren’t for the easy availability of high-quality, free-to-use code libraries which may be imported to perform common tasks. The work of creating the Observer’s Guide to Red Supergiants was especially eased by use of the following libraries:

Limitations

Please note that the Observer’s Guide to Red Supergiants was created by a student who loves red supergiants, not an active researcher in the field. While I have made every attempt to ensure its accuracy, the database is, at its core, a simple compilation of external resources; so it will retain any flaws or inaccuracies inherent to the original dataset(s). Please consider this a tool for planning observations only, and refer directly to the primary sources if data is required for research.