[vsnet-chat 5454] Let's research catalogs

[Seiichi Yoshida <comet@aerith.net>]

MISAO Project Announce Mail (August 22, 2002)

Hello. I am Seiichi Yoshida working on the MISAO project.

When you want to see about a star, how do you research it?

We often want to research stars: when we find a possible new star,
when we find a variable star, when we find a fast moving object
comparing with old images, and so on, in order to check if the star is
really new, or to know what kind of star it is.

Recently, I received e-mails from some persons on how to research star
catalogs using the PIXY System 2.

I also received an e-mail from John Greaves, the United Kingdom,
working on the TASS (The Amateur Sky Survey) data, on how to research
star catalogs on the interesting stars he found in the TASS data using
the PIXY System 2.

Therefore, we released the new PIXY System 2 with improved functions
on catalog research. In addition, now the tutorial pages on catalog
research are available in the MISAO Project Home Page.

As introduced in the announce mail on 2001 September 19, Support of
catalogues, so many catalogs are supported by the PIXY System 2. You
can research various information, such as variable stars, clusters and
nebulae, infrared objects, on your star. Especially on variable stars,
it supports a newvar.cat catalog compiled mainly by Taichi Kato, Kyoto
University. So you can check very new variable stars discovered by
amateurs.

After you construct a star database, you will be able to search any
sorts of stars repeatedly, easily and quickly.

First of all, here introduces how to research catalogs on one star. 

Let's see that you find a possible nova at R.A. 18h19m.1,
Decl. -30o19' from your image of the summer Milky Way, not found in
your past images, for example. 

You can check the SIMBAD service (http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/Simbad),
but it outputs no data around this position.

However, when you create a chart by the "View Multiple Catalog Chart"
menu using the PIXY System 2, and open the 

    Taichi Kato's Catalog of Variable Stars, etc., for VSNET
    http://ftp.kusastro.kyoto-u.ac.jp/pub/vsnet/others/newvar.cat

by the "Add Catalog" menu, you will find that there is a Mira type
variable HadV100 at the position, which will be 11.5 mag at maximum
and fainter than 13.8 mag at minimum. This is the 100th variable star
discovered by Katsumi Haseda.

If you want to research catalogs on many stars in one operation,
please use the "Cross Identification" function. 

First of all, create the list of stars you want to research in the
Astrometrica Other(ASCII) format. For example, create a file like:

Star 1        18 19 06.00 -30 19 00.0 11.5
Star 2        21 00 08.00 +44 21 20.5 12.5

Then select "Astrometrica Other(ASCII) Star Catalog" in the "Base
Catalog" section, and specify the file. And select:

    Taichi Kato's Catalog of Variable Stars, etc., for VSNET
    http://ftp.kusastro.kyoto-u.ac.jp/pub/vsnet/others/newvar.cat

in the "Identify With" section. After operating the "Cross
Identification", you will get the result as follows:

Star 1  18h19m06s.00 -30o19'00".0  Mag:11.50
= HadV100 (7.4")
HadV100  18h19m05s.76 -30o19'06".7  Mag(max):11.5  Mag(min):<13.8  MagSystem:p  Type:M

Star 2  21h00m08s.00 +44o21'20".5  Mag:12.50
= MisV1111 (2.9")
MisV1111  21h00m08s.21 +44o21'22".3  Mag(max):12.4  Mag(min):14.0  MagSystem:C  Type:SR?  ID:USNO-A2.0 1275.14464201, MSX5C G085.6796-01.1497  DiscoveryDate:2001 May 30  Discoverers:Seiichi Yoshida, Nobuo Ohkura, KenIchi Kadota

You can see the Star 1 is one of the new variable stars discovered by
Katsumi Haseda, and the Star 2 is one of the MISAO Project new
variable stars. 

But these steps take so many times because it reads all through the
selected catalog repeatedly. In addition, when you want to research
any sorts of catalogs like variable stars, clusters and nebulae, etc.,
it takes more time to open the catalogs one by one.

Then constructing a star database is recommended.

Please open the Star Database desktop using the PIXY System 2 and
select "Register Catalog" menu, and the star database is constructed
and the selected catalog is registered to the database.

After constructing the star database, you can plot all stars in the
star database by selecting "Add Stars in Database" menu.
menu. And you can research all stars in the database by selecting
"Identify With Database" in the "Cross Identification" operation. 

The following tutorial pages introduce how to research catalogs and
how to construct a star database using the PIXY System 2 with some
figures.

    Research Catalogs
    http://vsnet.aerith.net/misao/pixy/tutorial/catalog.html 

    Construct Star Database
    http://vsnet.aerith.net/misao/pixy/tutorial/database-star.html

We the MISAO Project also construct our own star database. In our
database, all catalogs in:

    Supported Catalogues
    http://vsnet.aerith.net/misao/pixy/catalog.html

except for global star catalogs such as the GSC 1.1, USNO-A1.0/2.0,
Tycho/Tycho-2 Catalogue, are registered, which contains about
1,500,000 stars.

The size of the database is 110MB after compressed, but it occupies
3GB of the hard disk after unpacking.

Because many catalogs are supported by the PIXY System 2, it takes
long time to construct a star database from the start. If you have an
enough free space on your hard disk, and if you want to research any
kind of stars by yourself, we the MISAO Project can send you our star
database. 

To run the PIXY System 2, some big softwares like JDK (Java
Development Kit) are required. If it is hard for you to download those
softwares, we can send you the "PIXY System 2 Startup CD" including
them, and the star database, too.

Please make a contact with Seiichi Yoshida (comet@aerith.net) if you
need.

P.S.
The past MISAO project announce mails are available at:
  http://vsnet.aerith.net/misao/

--
Seiichi Yoshida
comet@aerith.net
http://vsnet.aerith.net/

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