Bayer designation

Bayer assigned a lowercase Greek letter (alpha (α), beta (β), gamma (γ), etc.)[3] Bayer did not label "permanent" stars with uppercase letters (except for A, which he used instead of a to avoid confusion with α).However, a number of stars in southern constellations have uppercase letter designations, like B Centauri and G Scorpii.These letters were assigned by later astronomers, notably Lacaille in his Coelum Australe Stelliferum and Gould in his Uranometria Argentina.In addition, Bayer did not always follow the magnitude class rule; he sometimes assigned letters to stars according to their location within a constellation, or the order of their rising, or to historical or mythological details.)[6] Bayer then repeated the procedure for the stars of the 2nd magnitude, labeling them from gamma through zeta in "top-down" (north-to-south) order.23  Bayer assigned the first three of these stars a Greek letter from both constellations: Alpha Andromedae = Delta Pegasi, Beta Tauri = Gamma Aurigae, and Nu Boötis = Psi Herculis.[9][10] A further complication is the use of numeric superscripts to distinguish neighboring stars that Bayer (or a later astronomer) labeled with a common letter.
Detail of Bayer's chart for Orion showing the belt stars and Orion Nebula region, with both Greek and Latin letter labels visible
Orion constellation map
belt starsOrion Nebulastellar designationgenitiveastronomerJohann BayerUranometriaNicolas-Louis de LacailleBenjamin Apthorp GouldGreek letterAldebaranTaurusB CentauriG ScorpiiArgo NavisCarinaPuppisN VelorumQ Puppisapparent brightnessGeminiPolluxCastorCanopusNorma'sScorpiusH ScorpiiFrancis BailyLeo Minor46 Leonis MinorisBetelgeuseα Orionisβ Orionisγ Orionisδ Orionisε Orionisζ Orionisη Orionisθ Orionisι Orionisκ OrionisCygnusP CygniSN 1572PtolemyAlpheratzAndromedaPegasusElnathAurigaNu BoötisBoötesHerculesFomalhautPiscis AustrinusAquariusAlpha AndromedaeBeta TauriAlpha Piscis AustriniInternational Astronomical UnionXi ArietisKappa CetiKappa1Kappa2Upsilon LibraeOmicron Scorpiiproper motionRho AquilaeDelphinusdouble starsbinary starsOrionisPsi AurigaeFlamsteed designationGould designationLists of constellationsStar catalogueStellar designations and namesTable of stars with Bayer designationsVariable star designationBibcode88 modern constellationsused in antiquity as numerals