cwh@drutx.UUCP (Hoffmeyer) (02/05/85)
Does anyone know of an on-line database or book-form catalogue of stars down to about 5th magnitude, or (preferably) fainter? Data should include position (1950 or 2000 - as long as I know which), magnitude, color (type), size, and distance. I seem to recall hearing about a database created by the Air Force with just this sort of info in it. On another tack, might the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington have this sort of thing? Thanks for any help. While I'm at it, and, like others, received unfriendly electronic diagnostics about nonexistent mail paths to Austin, Congratulations to Debbie Byrd and her team at the University of Texas Astronomy Dept., Austin, - Please keep your programs coming - they're GRRRREAT! Regards - Carl Hoffmeyer drutx!cwh AT&T Information Systems Denver, Co. (303) 538 4707
steveg@gitpyr.UUCP (Steve Gilbreath) (02/06/85)
The best star database I know of is the SAO (Smithsonian Astronomical
Observatory) database. It's available on magnetic tape and contains
information on over 250,000 stars down to about the 15 magnitude or so.
It's got more information on each star than you will ever need.
Another good astro database is the BOSS catalog, which is also available
on tape. I don't know much about this one but I'm sure someone like
Debbie Byrd could tell you more.
--
Steve M. Gilbreath. Office of Computing Services. User Services.
Georgia Institute of Technology. Atlanta GA 30332. (404) 894-6168
...!{akgua, allegra, amd, hplabs, ihnp4, masscomp, ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!steveg
Real computers have 60 bit words.jlg@lanl.ARPA (02/07/85)
> > Does anyone know of an on-line database or book-form catalogue of > stars down to about 5th magnitude, or (preferably) fainter? > Data should include position (1950 or 2000 - as long as I know which), > magnitude, color (type), size, and distance. > I've often wondered about this myself. Has the Palomar Sky Survey (published by the Smithsonian I think) ever been digitized? With nearly EVERYONE using computers of some sort as a telescope controller you'd think that there's got to be something digitized. J. Giles
dba@cmu-cs-k.ARPA (David Anderson) (02/07/85)
This is a re-posting from the ARPAnet Space Digest -- maybe it will be of some help. Of course, I hesitate to post the whole 2 megabytes, but it may be possible to track down the source of the original floppies. * Date: Mon, 10 Sep 84 11:14:40 CDT * From: Mike Caplinger <mike@rice.ARPA> * Subject: small star database * To: cbosgd!djb@Berkeley.ARPA (David J. Bryant) * Cc: sky-fans@mit-xx.ARPA * * As a couple of people told me, the Yale Catalog of Bright Stars is * online in the CP/M archives on Simtel-20. According to the * documentation, this catalog is in the public domain. It contains * information for about ~9000 stars, and is slightly less than 2 * megabytes long. * * To get it, anonymous FTP to host SIMTEL-20, and retrieve * MICRO:<SIGM.VOL031>STAR.DOC, and the eight files * MICRO:<SIGM.VOL03n>STARn.DAT, n = 1 to 8 * * (It's in eight separate files because it was originally distributed on * floppy disk.) * * These are text files, and the format is explained in the documentation * file. * * By the way, SIMTEL-20 doesn't do directory listings over FTP for these * directories. * * - Mike -- David Anderson, Carnegie-Mellon University, CSD, (412) 422-1255.
mink@cfa.UUCP (Doug Mink) (02/08/85)
> Does anyone know of an on-line database or book-form catalogue of > stars down to about 5th magnitude, or (preferably) fainter? > Data should include position (1950 or 2000 - as long as I know which), > magnitude, color (type), size, and distance. > For book form, I'd recommend the Sky Catalogue 2000.0, published by Sky Publishing (Sky & Telescope magazine) and the Cambridge University Press. It has 45,000 stars and goes down to 8th magnitude. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a digitized version floating around somewhere. As for digitized catalogs, the National Space Science Data Center at NASA-Goddard sells digitized versions of many catalogs, including the 259,000-star 9th magnitude Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory catalog. I had a compressed version (about 8.5 Mbytes) on a DG Nova, which I intend to port to VAX UNIX someday. -Doug Mink {harvard|genrad|allegra|ihnp4}!wjh12!cfa!mink Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics 60 Garden St. Cambridge, MA 02138
bruce@ssc-vax.UUCP (Bruce Stock) (02/09/85)
> > Does anyone know of an on-line database or book-form catalogue of > stars down to about 5th magnitude, or (preferably) fainter? > Data should include position (1950 or 2000 - as long as I know which), > magnitude, color (type), size, and distance. Volume 31-38 of Sig/M from the Amateur Computer Group of New Jersey Inc, contains the YALE catalog of bright stars (down to mag 7). It contains a 200 byte alpha-numeric text entry for each star with loads of data. The whole catalog is some 3 Mbytes long. It has both 1950 and 2000 co-ords. I have a reduced version (approx 30 bytes/star) which reduces the whole catalog to about 270 Kbytes. It contains Position (2000 only), mag, color, and proper motion. I could post a copy to net.sources if there is sufficient interest (or conversely if there is sufficient lack of outcry at the posting of such a huge file). Bruce Stock Boeing Aerospace
wls@astrovax.UUCP (William L. Sebok) (02/11/85)
> I've often wondered about this myself. Has the Palomar Sky Survey > (published by the Smithsonian I think) ever been digitized? With nearly > EVERYONE using computers of some sort as a telescope controller you'd think > that there's got to be something digitized. > J. Giles Digitizing the Palomar Sky survey is extremely non-trivial, although I'd love to get involve in the project to do it. One 14" x 14" plate from the Palomar sky survey when digitized at about the photographic grain (~ 10 micron/pixel = ~ 3/4 arcseconds/pixel) yields an image about 30,000 pixels square = about a billion pixels. This severely taxes the ability of present computers and storage media. One plate is about 20 2400' reels of tape at 1600 bpi, and there are thousands of plates in the Palomar sky survey. My dealings with these volumns of data are the reasons for some of my sacreligous views that some things should be written in assembler. My Ph.D. thesis at Caltech involved taking several of these plates on the telescope that did the sky survey (the Palomar 48"), digitizing them (after helping build the digitizer and writing all the software to drive it), and having the computer make a list of all of the objects on the plate, measuring their positions and brightnesses and classifying them as stars or galaxies or whatever. This was essentially an AI project although done in an astronomy department. It took 10 days of scanner and computer time to process one plate up to a list of classified objects (the amount of time to get some science out of that catalog was a whole other story). I had time to do 4 plates out of the 100 I took. I haven't had time to get to the rest of these plates, having been sidetracked with my present job of managing astrovax. I really hope I can get back into this business soon. I have heard tentative plans to digitize the new Palomar sky survey that is about to start but I don't know the present status of these plans. -- Bill Sebok Princeton University, Astrophysics {allegra,akgua,burl,cbosgd,decvax,ihnp4,noao,princeton,vax135}!astrovax!wls