[vsnet-chat 279] Re: New Variables & Nomenclature (fwd)

[Stan Walker <astroman@voyager.co.nz>]

>I was interested in your comments regarding the GCVS and Excel. I have
>the five volume paper version of the former as well as the software you
>mention.
>How do I obtain the machine readable version and could you please
>explain how you imported it into EXCEL?
>Kind regards,
>Guy
>Editor, The Astronomer

Greetings, Guy,

The GCVS Catalogue is in a two CCD package which NASA was distributing a
year or so ago - along with a lot of other catalogues - so it isn't quite up
to date but it's still pretty good. It doesn't have the supplementary notes
which limits it a little - these often contain the real information!

My version of Excel balks at more than 16384 lines so I just chopped the
GCVS into two bits using either Word (or Wordstar 2000 - I can't remember
which) and then loaded both into Excel - the CCD version uses fixed width
columns. Then I chopped out a lot of the stuff that isn't of much interest -
galactic lat and long, precession, etc. I then sorted them into types and
stuck them together using Word again. I'm mainly interested in Miras and
SRs, Cepheids and CVs, so my working catalogue isn't too large.

There is a nice feature in that the stars are all numbered by constellation
and VS number - e.g., V1051 Ophiuchi is numbered as 591051 and R Andromedae
as 010001 so you can always return anything to the GCVS order with a simple
sort. I'm not sure how they handle things like eta Carinae but it'll be
there. There's a little space in that Sagittarius is still under 5000
entries so the seventh digit is a way off yet. This system is something for
the VS Nomenclature chatters to consider!!

The beauty of all of this is that the Mira catalogue in Excel then can have
separate sheets in RA order, brightness, period, and so on...

Grant Christie in Auckland used a more parochial approach in that he just
loaded all the stars we can usefully see from New Zealand - the limit being
set by where the 16384th star from the SCP was! 

I'm not sure if there are machine readable copies of the supplementary lists
but someone should know this. I'd like these too.

Regards,
Stan Walker

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