MISAO Project

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August 22, 2002

    Let's research catalogs    

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
ftp://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
ftp://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  Mag
System: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://www.aerith.net/misao/pixy/tutorial/catalog.html
Construct Star Database
http://www.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://www.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://www.aerith.net/misao/

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

Copyright(C) MISAO Project (comet@aerith.net). All rights reserved.