The file "stars.dat" contains the star catalog used by 3D Starchart. It contains entries for about 7800 stars. "stars.dat" should not be renamed and should remain in the same folder as 3D Starchart.
Hipparchos Catalog & Bright Star CatalogThe data in "stars.dat" was derived from the Hipparchos Star Catalog and the Bright Star Catalog. Description follows:
Description:
The Hipparcos and Tycho Catalogues are the primary products of the
European Space Agency's astrometric mission, Hipparcos. The satellite,
which operated for four years, returned high quality scientific data
from November 1989 to March 1993.
Each of the catalogues contains a large quantity of very high quality
astrometric and photometric data. In addition there are associated
annexes featuring variability and double/multiple star data, and solar
system astrometric and photometric measurements. In the case of the
Hipparcos Catalogue, the principal parts are provided in both printed
and machine-readable form (on CDROM). In the case of the Tycho
Catalogue, results are provided in machine-readable form only (on
CDROM). Although in general only the final reduced and calibrated
astrometric and photometric data are provided, some auxiliary files
containing results from intermediate stages of the data processing, of
relevance for the more-specialised user, have also been retained for
publication. (Some, but not all, data files are available from the
Centre de Donnees astronomiques de Strasbourg.)
The global data analysis tasks, proceeding from nearly 1000 Gbit of
raw satellite data to the final catalogues, was a lengthy and complex
process, and was undertaken by the NDAC and FAST Consortia, together
responsible for the production of the Hipparcos Catalogue, and the
Tycho Consortium, responsible for the production of the Tycho
Catalogue. A fourth scientific consortium, the INCA Consortium, was
responsible for the construction of the Hipparcos observing programme,
compiling the best-available data for the selected stars before launch
into the Hipparcos Input Catalogue. The production of the Hipparcos
and Tycho Catalogues marks the formal end of the involvement in the
mission by the European Space Agency and the four scientific
consortia.
For more complete and detailed information on the data, the user is
advised to refer to Volume 1 ("Introduction and Guide to the Data",
ESA SP-1200) of the printed Hipparcos and Tycho Catalogues. The user
should also note that in order to convert the Double and Multiple
Systems (Component solutions) data file hip_dm_c.dat into FITS format
it is first necessary to filter the file according to whether the
entry is a component record (identified by COMP in field DCM5) or a
correlation record (identified by CORR in field DCM5) because of the
different structures of the respective records. On a Unix system this
can be achieved as follows:
grep COMP hip_dm_c.dat > h_dm_com.dat
grep CORR hip_dm_c.dat > h_dm_cor.dat
The catalogue description file (this file) gives the relevant
information for converting the main data files, including h_dm_cor.dat
and h_dm_com.dat, into FITS format.
The machine readable data files (i.e. those available on CD-ROM and
the subset available from the CDS) contain several extra fields in
addition to the data from the printed catalogue. These fields are
identified by the letter `M' in the data label (e.g. the field DGM1
contains data only available in the machine readable file
hip_dm_g.dat).
The above catalog and others can be found at http://adc.gsfc.nasa.gov/
If you are just interested in the above catalogs, they are at:
Hipparchos Catalog
Bright Star Catalog
Stars.dat FormatIf you add additional stars or convert another ( larger perhaps ) catalog, the format used in "stars.dat" is as follows:
[Star Name / Notes]
[Spectral Class] [Absolute Magnitude] [x] [y] [z]See the included project "stellarcoordinates" for converting parallax, Right Ascension, and Declination to x,y,z coordinates.
Consecutive entries with the same x,y,z coordinates are interpreted as binary/ multiple star systems. The first entry in such a group should be the primary ( brightest ) star.
