space@mit-mc (03/08/85)
From: <bang!crash!bwebster@Nosc>
I've been reading INFO-SPACE for several months now, and I'm not sure if
you folks can help, but I'm getting desperate. Here's the story:
I'm a contributing editor for BYTE Magazine. During the past few months,
I've written a 3-D star map program for the Macintosh. It shows Sol and
nearby stars as a cluster viewed from some imaginary point outside. You
can reset the origin, view along different axes, scale the display, and
filter out stars based on class, count (single/binary/trinary), and distance
from the origin. I got my data base from an old SF role-playing game,
UNIVERSE (from the now-defunct SPI), which has a nice map of all the star
within ~30 ly. of Sol. All well and fine.
BYTE wants me to write this program up as an article for the July ("Computers
and Space") issue. That's fine, but it causes a few problems. Most users
are going to want to have a star list that uses RA/DEC/PAR; the UNIVERSE map
has everything converted to a Cartesian grid with 1 unit = 1 ly. No problem;
the changes to the program take an hour or two. Now I just need to run to
a local university library and get a list of nearby stars.
Problem: most references only list the nearest 25 stars, and most of those
are based on van de Kamp's 1953 list (stars w/in 5 parsecs). I *do* find
Allen's "Astrophysical Quantities" (3rd ed., 1973), which does have the 100
nearest stars; however, the UNIVERSE map has nearly double that number, and
the program doesn't look nearly as impressive with the smaller list. Visits
to two universities (UCSD, SDSU), both to their libraries and their astronomy
departments, yield nothing more except a few passing reference to the "Catalog
of Nearby Stars". In the meantime, the first deadline for my article has come
and gone, and the managing editor is wondering where my article is.
Request: can any of you out there get me a list of the 200 or so (the more
the better!) stars nearest Sol? For each system, I need the name, right
ascension, declination, and parallax, and the class/subclass/size (all I
really care about is dwarf/nodwarf) of the components. For example:
`
NamRA: HH MM D MM PAR A B C
Sirius 6 43 -16 39 377 A1 dA5
BD +50 10 8 49 42 219 K7
36 Ophiuchi 17 1-26 32 184 K1 K1 K5
and so on. The list does *not* have to be sorted by distance; my program
handles that. The "cleaner" and more up-to-date your list, the better. I
noticed discrepancies between the different lists I looked at; I would like
(as much as possible) to avoid letters saying, "You fool! Don't you know
that Sirius is closer than UV Ceti?"
If the list has more data (i.e., if you're sending an existing file or even
some xeroxed pages), no problem. The key word is SPEED; I needed this last
week. Not only will the person or persons providing such a list earn my
undying gratitude, but they will also be publicly thanked in the BYTE article
and anywhere else I can fit it in.
The absolute best way to send it would be to my node address:
bang!crash!bwebster@nosc
{ihnp4, sdcsvax!bang}!crash!bwebster
Other addresses:
CompuServe: 75166,1717
M: 138-5892
Fido: Node #87 (619-286-7838, 300/1200 baud) (my own node)
USPS: 6215 Thorn St, San Diego, CA 92115
As mentioned above, I have my own bulletin board (Fido #87). If you want to
call it directly and download, please do. If you want to save yourself
phone charges, call me [voice] at (619) 286-7576, and give me instructiongs
on how to call *you*.
Many thanks to all; I know this is a large message and isn't adding much to
the general discussion (though it perhaps beats out electric guitars in a
vacuum and possibly even relativistic ashes). Hope to hear from some of you
soon.
..bruce..
Bruce Webster/BYTE Magazine
bang!crash!bwebster@nosc
{ihnp4, sdcsvax!bang}!crash!bwebsterethan@utastro.UUCP (Ethan Vishniac) (03/12/85)
[]
Bruce,
I'm sorry to put this in the net, but I'm not sure how to get mail to
you dependably. I looked up the Catalog of Nearby Stars and came up empty.
There are catalogs of stars with large proper motions (angular motion on
the sky) which must be predominantly nearby stars. I didn't find any that
included distance estimates. The closest I came was a catalog published
as a Royal Observatory Bulletin (Vol 51) which gives spatial velocities
for some 3483 stars. This catalog necessarily includes distance estimates,
most of which are based on spectral classification rather than a measured
parallax. If you can find the catalog then column VIII gives the distance
modulus. This is related to distance by
Distance (in tens of parsecs) = 10^^(0.2*distance modulus)
The catalog was compiled by Olin Eggin. I hope this helps.space@mit-mc (03/20/85)
From: <bang!crash!bwebster@Nosc>
Martin (and the rest of you helpful people):
(1) there appear to be no copies of either Woolley or Gliese here in
San Diego. I made trips to UCSD, SDSU, and even USD with no luck.
(2) UC Irvine has (according to MELVYN, the online UC library catalog)
a copy of Woolley.
(3) Michael Hartsough, a student at USC, found a copy of Gliese (or was
it Woolley?) and checked it out (bless his heart). I may yet run
up and look at it (not to mention do some xeroxing).
(4) Had a long and profitable talk with Wayne Warren, director of the
Astronomical Data Center at NASA/Goddard. He has both Gliese and
Woolley *on mag tape* and will cheerfully send me the files if I
send him a blank tape. Then I'll just need to find someone who
can transfer it from mag tape to a uucp node (and thence to crash).
Warren also said that Gliese is working on a brand-new catalog of
nearby stars which is supposed to be out by early next year. I, for
one, plan to buy a copy when it comes out.
(5) If you're interested in the star map program (or even just the list
of nearby stars), please drop me a line at the address below. I'm
not ready (able) to send stuff out yet, but I will as soon as I can.
As mention, the Mac version is written in MacAdvantage (UCSD Pascal);
I hope to quickly convert it to C (probably Megamax), so state your
preference as to which language you want (IBM'ers: I'll do a conver-
sion to Turbo Pascal at some point).
(6) Thanks to one and all; you've all been great.
..bruce..
Bruce Webster/BYTE Magazine
bang!crash!bwebster@nosc
{ihnp4 | sdcsvax!bang}!crash!bwebsterspace@mit-mc (03/26/85)
From: dual!ihnp1!whitten Bruce, I'd be interested in getting a copy of your star program for the Macintosh when you have it ready. Also the star data would be fun to have. I've enjoyed watching your conversations in trying to track down the star data even though I didn't have any information to contribute. Usenet sure allows one to tap into an amazing wealth of knowledge. I'll be looking forward to your Byte article. Tom Whitten AT&T Bell Laboratories Naperville, Illinois 312/979-5827 ihnp4!ihnp1!whitten