thumb|300px|An illustration of the [[Perseus (constellation)|Perseus constellation (after
Perseus from
Greek mythology) from the star catalogue published by the German astronomer
Johannes Hevelius in 1690]]
A
star catalogue, or
star catalog, is an
astronomical catalogue that lists
stars. In
astronomy, many stars are referred to simply by catalogue numbers. There are a great many different star catalogues which have been produced for different purposes over the years, and this article covers only some of the more frequently quoted ones. Star catalogues were compiled by many different ancient peoples, including the
Babylonians,
Greeks,
Chinese,
Persians and
Arabs. Most modern catalogues are available in electronic format and can be freely downloaded from
NASA's Astronomical Data Center.
Historical catalogues
Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia
From their existing records, it is known that the
ancient Egyptians recorded the names of only a few identifiable
constellations and a list of thirty-six
decans that were used as a
star clock. The Egyptians called the
circumpolar star 'the star that cannot perish' and, although they made no known formal star catalogues, they nonetheless created extensive
star charts of the night sky which adorn the coffins and ceilings of tomb chambers.
Although the ancient
Sumerians were the first to record the names of constellations on
clay tablets, the
earliest known star catalogues were compiled by
the ancient Babylonians of
Mesopotamia in the late 2nd millennium BC, during the
Kassite Period (
ca. 1531 BC to
ca. 1155 BC). They are better known by their
Assyrian-era name 'Three Stars Each'. These star catalogues, written on
clay tablets, listed thirty-six stars: twelve for '
Anu' along the
celestial equator, twelve for '
Ea' south of that, and twelve for '
Enlil' to the north.
[North, John. (1995). The Norton History of Astronomy and Cosmology. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393036561. Pages 30-31.] The
Mul.Apin lists, dated to sometime before the
Neo-Babylonian Empire (626-539 BC), are direct textual descendants of the 'Three Stars Each' lists and their constellation patterns show similarities to those of later
Greek civilization.
[North, John. (1995). The Norton History of Astronomy and Cosmology. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393036561. Pages 32.]Hellenistic world and Roman Empire
In
Ancient Greece, the astronomer and mathematician
Eudoxus laid down a full set of the classical
constellations around 370 BC.
His catalogue
Phaenomena, rewritten by
Aratus of Soli between 275 and 250 BC as a didactic poem, became one of the most consulted astronomical texts in
antiquity and beyond.
It contains descriptions of the positions of the stars, the shapes of the constellations and provided information on their relative times of rising and setting.
[Rogers, J. H. , Journal of the British Astronomical Association, Vol. 108, No. 2, (1998), p.79-89 (81)]Approximately in the 3rd century BC, the
Greek astronomers Timocharis of Alexandria and
Aristillus created another star catalogue.
Hipparchus (c. 190 – c. 120 BC) completed his star catalogue in 129 BC, which he compared to
Timocharis' and discovered that the
longitude of the stars had changed over time. This led him to determine the first value of the
precession of the equinoxes. In the 2nd century,
Ptolemy (c. 90 - c. 186 AD) of
Roman Egypt published a star catalogue as part of his
Almagest, which listed 1,022 stars visible from
Alexandria. It was the standard star catalogue in the Western and
Arab worlds for over a thousand years. Ptolemy's catalogue was based almost entirely on an earlier one by Hipparchus (Newton 1977; Rawlins 1982).
Although the ancient
Vedas of
India specified how the
ecliptic was to be divided into twenty-eight
nakshatra, Indian constellation patterns were ultimately borrowed from Greek ones sometime after
Alexander's conquests in Asia in the 4th century BC.
Ancient China
The earliest known inscriptions for
Chinese star names were written on
oracle bones and date to the
Shang Dynasty (c. 1600 - c. 1050 BC). Sources dating from the
Zhou Dynasty (c. 1050 - 256 BC) which provide star names include the
Zuo Zhuan, the
Shi Jing, and the "Canon of Yao" (堯典) in the
Book of Documents. The
Lüshi Chunqiu written by the
Qin statesman
Lü Buwei (d. 235 BC) provides most of the names for the
twenty-eight mansions (i.e.
asterisms across the
ecliptic belt of the
celestial sphere used for constructing the
calendar). An earlier
lacquerware chest found in the
Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng (interred in 433 BC) contains a complete list of the names of
the twenty-eight mansions. Star catalogues are traditionally attributed to
Shi Shen and
Gan De, two rather obscure
Chinese astronomers who may have been active in the 4th century BC of the
Warring States Period (403-221 BC).
[Christopher Cullen, “Joseph Needham on Chinese Astronomy”, Past and Present, No. 87 (1980), pp. 39-53 (46f.)] The
Shi Shen astronomy (石申天文, Shi Shen tienwen) is attributed to Shi Shen, and the
Astronomic star observation (天文星占, Tianwen xingzhan) to Gan De.
It was not until the
Han Dynasty (202 BC - 220 AD) that astronomers started to observe and record names for all the stars that were apparent (to the
naked eye) in the night sky, not just those around the ecliptic. A star catalogue is featured in one of the chapters of the late 2nd-century-BC history work
Records of the Grand Historian by
Sima Qian (145-86 BC) and contains the "schools" of Shi Shen and Gan De's work (i.e. the different constellations they allegedly focused on for astrological purposes). Sima's catalogue—the
Book of Celestial Offices (天官書 Tianguan shu)—includes some 90 constellations, the stars therein named after
temples, ideas in
philosophy, locations such as markets and shops, and different people such as
farmers and soldiers. For his
Spiritual Constitution of the Universe (靈憲, Ling Xian) of 120 AD, the astronomer
Zhang Heng (78-139 AD) compiled a star catalogue comprising 124 constellations.
Chinese constellation names were later adopted by the
Koreans and
Japanese.
Islamic world
A large number of star catalogues were published by
Muslim astronomers in the
medieval Islamic world. These were mainly
Zij treatises, including
Arzachel's
Tables of Toledo (1087), the
Maragheh observatory's
Zij-i Ilkhani (1272) and
Ulugh Beg's
Zij-i-Sultani (1437). Other famous
Arabic star catalogues include
Alfraganus'
A compendium of the science of stars (850) which corrected Ptolemy's
Almagest; and
Azophi's
Book of Fixed Stars (964) which described observations of the
stars, their positions,
magnitudes, brightness and
colour, drawings for each
constellation, and the first descriptions of
Andromeda Galaxy and the
Large Magellanic Cloud.
Many stars are still known by their Arabic names (see
List of Arabic star names).
Pre-Columbian Americas
The
Motul Dictionary, compiled in the 16th century by an anonymous author (although attributed to Fray Antonio de Ciudad Real), contains a list of stars originally observed by the
ancient Mayas. The
Maya Paris Codex also contain symbols for different constellations which were represented by mythological beings.
Bayer and Flamsteed catalogues
Two systems introduced in historical catalogues remain in use to the present day. The first system comes from the
German astronomer
Johann Bayer's (1572-1625)
Uranometria published in 1603 and is for bright stars. These are given a
Greek letter followed by the
genitive case of the
constellation in which they are located; examples are
Alpha Centauri or
Gamma Cygni. The major problem with Bayer's naming system was the number of letters in the
Greek alphabet (24). It was easy to run out of letters before running out of stars needing names, particularly for large constellations such as
Argo Navis. Bayer extended his lists up to 67 stars by using lower-case Roman letters ("a" through "z") then upper-case ones ("A" through "Q"). Few of those designations have survived. It is worth mentioning, however, as it served as the starting point for
variable star designations, which start with "R" through "Z", then "RR", "RS", "RT"..."RZ", "SS", "ST"..."ZZ" and beyond.
The second system comes from the English astronomer
John Flamsteed's (1646-1719)
Historia coelestis Britannica. It kept the genitive-of-the-constellation rule for the back end of his catalog names, but used numbers instead of the Greek alphabet for the front half. Examples include
61 Cygni and
47 Ursae Majoris.
Full-sky catalogues
Bayer and Flamsteed covered only a few thousand stars between them. In theory, full-sky catalogues try to list every star in the sky. There are, however, literally hundreds of millions, even billions of stars resolvable by
telescopes, so this is an impossible goal; these kind of catalogs generally try to get every star brighter than a given
magnitude.
LAL
Jérôme Lalande published the
Histoire Céleste Française in 1801, which contained an extensive star catalog, among other things. The observations made were made from the
Paris Observatory and so it describes mostly northern stars. This catalog contained the positions and magnitudes of 47,390 stars, out to magnitude 9, and was the most complete catalog up to that time. A significant reworking of this catalog in 1846 added reference numbers to the stars that are used to refer to some of these stars to this day. The decent accuracy of this catalog kept it in common use as a reference by observatories around the world throughout the 19th century.
HD/HDE
The Henry Draper Catalogue was published in the period 1918–1924. It covers the whole sky down to about ninth or tenth magnitude, and is notable as the first large-scale attempt to catalogue
spectral types of stars.
The catalogue was compiled by
Annie Jump Cannon and her co-workers at
Harvard College Observatory under the supervision of
Edward Pickering, and was named in honour of
Henry Draper, whose widow donated the money required to finance it.
HD numbers are widely used today for stars which have no Bayer or Flamsteed designation. Stars numbered 1–225300 are from the original catalogue and are numbered in order of
right ascension for the 1900.0
epoch. Stars in the range 225301–359083 are from the 1949 extension of the catalogue. The notation HDE can be used for stars in this extension, but they are usually denoted HD as the numbering ensures that there can be no ambiguity.
SAO
The
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory catalogue was compiled in 1966 from various previous
astrometric catalogues, and contains only the stars to about ninth magnitude for which accurate proper motions were known. There is considerable overlap with the Henry Draper catalogue, but any star lacking motion data is omitted. The
epoch for the position measurements in the latest edition is
J2000.0. The SAO catalogue contains this major piece of information not in Draper, the
proper motion of the stars, so it is often used when that fact is of importance. The cross-references with the Draper and Durchmusterung catalogue numbers in the latest edition are also useful.
Names in the SAO catalogue start with the letters SAO, followed by a number. The numbers are assigned following 18 ten-degree bands in the sky, with stars sorted by
right ascension within each band.
BD/CD/CPD
The
Bonner Durchmusterung (
German:
Bonn sampling) and follow-ups were the most complete of the pre-photographic star catalogues.
The
Bonner Durchmusterung itself was published by
Friedrich Wilhelm Argelander,
Adalbert Krüger, and
Eduard Schönfeld between 1852 and 1859. It covered 320,000 stars in epoch 1855.0.
As it covered only the northern sky and some of the south (being compiled from the
Bonn observatory), this was then supplemented by the
Südliche Durchmusterung (SD), which covers stars between declinations -1 and -23 degrees
(1886, 120,000 stars). It was further supplemented by the
Cordoba Durchmusterung (580,000 stars), which began to be compiled at
Córdoba, Argentina in 1892 under the initiative of
John M. Thome and covers declinations -22 to -90. Lastly, the
Cape Photographic Durchmusterung (450,000 stars, 1896), compiled at the Cape, South Africa, covers declinations -18 to -90.
Astronomers preferentially use the HD designation of a star, as that catalogue also gives
spectroscopic information, but as the Durchmusterungs cover more stars they occasionally fall back on the older designations when dealing with one not found in Draper. Unfortunately, a lot of catalogues cross-reference the Durchmusterungs without specifying which one is used in the zones of overlap, so some confusion often remains.
Star names from these catalogues include the initials of which of the four catalogues they are from (though the
Southern follows the example of the
Bonner and uses BD; CPD is often shortened to CP), followed by the angle of
declination of the star (rounded towards zero, and thus ranging from +00 to +89 and -00 to -89), followed by an arbitrary number as there are always thousands of stars at each angle. Examples include BD+50°1725 or CD-45°13677.
AC
The
Catalogue astrographique (Astrographic Catalogue) was part of the international
Carte du Ciel programme designed to photograph and measure the positions of all stars brighter than magnitude 11.0. In total, over 4.6 million stars were observed, many as faint as 13th magnitude. This project was started in the late 1800s. The observations were made between 1891 and 1950. To observe the entire celestial sphere without burdening too many institutions, the sky was divided among 20 observatories, by declination zones. Each observatory exposed and measured the plates of its zone, using a standardized telescope (a "normal
astrograph") so each plate photographed had a similar scale of approximately 60 arcsecs/mm. The
U.S. Naval Observatory took over custody of the catalogue, now in its 2000.2 edition.
USNO-B1.0
is an all-sky catalog created by research and operations astrophysicists at the
U.S. Naval Observatory (as developed at the
United States Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station), that presents positions, proper motions, magnitudes in various optical passbands, and star/galaxy estimators for 1,042,618,261 objects derived from 3,643,201,733 separate observations. The data were obtained from scans of 7,435
Schmidt plates taken for the various sky surveys during the last 50 years. USNO-B1.0 is believed to provide all-sky coverage, completeness down to V = 21, 0.2 arcsecond astrometric accuracy at
J2000.0, 0.3 magnitude photometric accuracy in up to five colors, and 85% accuracy for distinguishing stars from non-stellar objects. USNO-B is now followed by
NOMAD ; both can be found on the
Naval Observatory server .
GSC
The
Guide Star Catalog is an online catalog of stars produced for the purpose of accurately positioning and identifying stars satisfactory for use as
guide stars by the
Hubble Space Telescope program. The first version of the catalog was produced in the late 1980's by digitizing photographic plates and contained about 20 million stars, out to about magnitude 15. The latest version of this catalog contains information for 945,592,683 stars, out to magnitude 21. The latest version continues to be used to accurately position the
Hubble Space Telescope.
Specialized catalogues
Specialized catalogs make no effort to list all the stars in the sky, working instead to highlight a particular type of star, such as
variables or
nearby stars.
ADS
Aitken's
double star catalogue
New general catalogue of double stars within 120 deg of the North Pole (1932, R. G. Aitken).
This lists 17,180 double stars north of
declination -30 degrees.
BS, BSC, HR
First published in 1930 as the
Yale Catalog of Bright Stars, this catalog contained information on all stars brighter than
visual magnitude 6.5 in the
Harvard Revised Photometry Catalogue. The list was revised in 1983 with the publication of a supplement that listed additional stars down to magnitude 7.1. The catalog detailed each star's coordinates,
proper motions,
photometric data,
spectral types, and other useful information.
The last printed version of the Bright Star Catalogue was the 4th revised edition, released in 1982. The is in electronic form and is available online.
Carbon Stars
Stephenson's General Catalogue of galactic Carbon stars[ (accessed 13/05/2009)] is a catalogue of 7000+
[ (accessed 13/05/2009)] carbon stars.
Gl, GJ, Wo
The
Gliese (later Gliese-
Jahreiß) catalogue attempts to list all stars within 20 parsecs of
Earth ordered by
right ascension (see the
List of nearest stars). Later editions expanded the coverage to 25 parsecs. Numbers in the range 1.0–965.0 (
Gl numbers) are from the second edition, which was
Catalogue of Nearby Stars (1969, W. Gliese).
The integers up to 915 represent stars which were in the first edition. Numbers with a decimal point were used to insert new stars for the second edition without destroying the desired order (by
right ascension). This catalogue is referred to as CNS2, although this name is never used in catalogue numbers.
Numbers in the range 9001–9850 (
Wo numbers) are from the supplement
Extension of the Gliese catalogue (1970,
R. Woolley, E. A. Epps, M. J. Penston and S. B. Pocock).
Numbers in the ranges 1000–1294 and 2001–2159 (
GJ numbers) are from the supplement
Nearby Star Data Published 1969–1978 (1979, W. Gliese and H. Jahreiß).
The range 1000–1294 represents nearby stars, while 2001–2159 represents suspected nearby stars. In the literature, the GJ numbers are sometimes retroactively extended to the Gl numbers (since there is no overlap). For example,
Gliese 436 can be interchangeably referred to as either Gl 436 or GJ 436.
Numbers in the range 3001–4388 are from
Preliminary Version of the Third Catalogue of Nearby Stars (1991, W. Gliese and H. Jahreiß).
Although this version of the catalogue was termed "preliminary", it is still the current one , and is referred to as CNS3. It lists a total of 3,803 stars. Most of these stars already had GJ numbers, but there were also 1,388 which were not numbered. The need to give these 1,388
some name has resulted in them being numbered 3001–4388 (
NN numbers, for "no name"), and data files of this catalogue now usually include these numbers. An example of a star which is often referred to by one of these unofficial GJ numbers is
GJ 3021.
GCTP
The General Catalogue of Trigonometric Parallaxes, first published in 1952 and later superseded by the New GCTP (now in its fourth edition), covers nearly 9,000 stars. Unlike the Gliese, it does not cut off at a given distance from the Sun; rather it attempts to catalogue all known measured parallaxes. It gives the co-ordinates in 1900 epoch, the secular variation, the proper motion, the weighted average absolute parallax and its standard error, the number of parallax observations, quality of interagreement of the different values, the visual magnitude and various cross-identifications with other catalogues. Auxiliary information, including UBV photometry, MK spectral types, data on the variability and binary nature of the stars, orbits when available, and miscellaneous information to aid in determining the reliability of the data are also listed.
HIP
The
Hipparcos catalogue was compiled from the data gathered by the
European Space Agency's astrometric satellite
Hipparcos, which was operational from 1989 to 1993. The catalogue was published in June 1997 and contains 118,218 stars. It is particularly notable for its
parallax measurements, which are considerably more accurate than those produced by ground-based observations.
PPM
The
PPM Star Catalogue is one of best, both in the proper motion and star position till 1999. Not as precise as
Hipparcos catalogue but with many more stars. The PPM was built from BD, SAO, HD and more, with sophisticated algorithm and is a extension for the Fifth Fundamental Catalogue, "
Catalogues of Fundamental Stars".
Proper motion catalogues
A common way of detecting nearby stars is to look for relatively high proper motions. Several catalogues exist, of which we'll mention a few. The
Ross and
Wolf catalogues pioneered the domain:
Wolf, Max, "Katalog von 1053 stärker bewegten Fixsternen", Veröff. d. Badischen Sternwarte zu Heidelberg (Königstuhl), Bd. 7, No. 10, 1919; and numerous lists in
Astronomische Nachrichten 209 to 236, 1919-1929
Willem Jacob Luyten later produced a series of catalogues:
L - Luyten, Proper motion stars and White dwarfs
Luyten, W. J., Proper Motion Survey with the forty-eight inch Schmidt Telescope, University of Minnesota, 1941 ()
LFT - Luyten Five-Tenths catalogue
Luyten, W. J., A Catalog of 1849 Stars with Proper Motion exceeding 0.5" annually, Lund Press, Minneapolis (Mn), 1955 ()
LHS - Luyten Half-Second catalogue
Luyten, W. J., Catalogue of stars with proper motions exceeding 0"5 annually, University of Minnesota, 1979 ()
LTT - Luyten Two-Tenths catalogue
Luyten, W. J. Luyten's Two Tenths. A catalogue of 9867 stars in the Southern Hemisphere with proper motions exceeding 0".2 annually, Minneapolis, 1957; also supplements 1961–1962. ()
NLTT - New Luyten Two-Tenths catalogue
Luyten, W. J., New Luyten Catalogue of stars with proper motions larger than two tenths of an arcsecond (NLTT), Univ. of Minnesota, 1979, supplement 1980 ()
LPM - Luyten Proper-Motion catalogue
Luyten, W. J., Proper Motion Survey with the 48 inch Schmidt Telescope, University of Minnesota, 1963-1981
Later,
Henry Lee Giclas took over, again with a series of catalogues:
Giclas, H. L., et al., Lowell Proper Motion Survey, Lowell Observatory Bulletins, 1971-1979 ()
See also
