rdp@teddy.UUCP (08/08/85)
[] In the most recent issue of "Astronomy" magazine, (August, 1985) there is an article about plotting start maps with home computers. In it, they mention the availability of a database of about 1500 of the brightest stars through a COMPUSERVE account. Does anyone on the net have the wherewithall to download this database and make it available to us all? The details are as follows (I quote from the article): Computer owners witha modem can download STARS.BAS and STARS.DAT from Compuserve's Public Access Area. ... From the Access Area (PCS-46), type: R STARS.DOC[74206,110] at any prompt for program documentation along with the instructionns for down- loading the program and database. You will also need the program, which is listed as STARS.BAS[74206,110]. In order to help the owners of computers with small capture buffers, the database is divided into four files: STARS1.DAT[74206,110] STARS2.DAT[74206,110] STARS3.DAT[74206,110] STARS4.DAT[74206,110] Each file contains one-fourth of the data base, or 12,000 characters. ... If any kind soul would care to undertake downloading these files, I and, probably, many others on the net would be appreciative. Alternatively, if anyone already has such a database, please let us all know Thank you all... Dick Pierce
john@frog.UUCP (John Woods) (08/09/85)
> In the most recent issue of "Astronomy" magazine, (August, 1985) there is > an article about plotting start maps with home computers. In it, they > mention the availability of a database of about 1500 of the brightest > stars through a COMPUSERVE account. > > Computer owners witha modem can download > STARS.BAS and STARS.DAT from Compuserve's > Public Access Area. ... > STARS1.DAT[74206,110] > STARS2.DAT[74206,110] > STARS3.DAT[74206,110] > STARS4.DAT[74206,110] If this is the "Yale Catalog of Bright Stars", it is also available by FTP from SIMTEL-20 (though I don't remember the filenames one wants). I also have it on tape, and it fits on 8 CP/M 8" SSSD floppies. The Yale database I have is significantly larger than 48,000 bytes, though -- the Compuserve database may just be the position information (rather than the whole catalog) or it may be a different database altogether. -- John Woods, Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA, (617) 626-1101 ...!decvax!frog!john, ...!mit-eddie!jfw, jfw%mit-ccc@MIT-XX.ARPA
west@calgary.UUCP (Darrin West) (08/12/85)
> In the most recent issue of "Astronomy" magazine, (August, 1985) there is > an article about plotting start maps with home computers. > > Dick Pierce If anyone else tried the program given in this article, please note that it is possible to speed the thing up by about 1/3 simply by putting the first two sin/cos calculations before the loop. They always give the same answer anyways. (They were observation point ra and dec calculations I think.) I wrote it in C on a Commodore 64 and typed in many stars from an observers handbook. It plots approx 10 to 15 stars per second, which according to the article would be very fast. Try compiling the code. Darrin West University of Calgary Computer Science.