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** VERSION 1.1 CHANGELOG

(1) Gaia DR3 data integration into UrukFSP has been completed and is currently under test.
Gaia is largely incomplete under Vmag +3, so a merge with another catalogue is necessary.
Brightest stars are extracted from HIP2 Catalogue, a newer revision (2007) of the original
Hipparcos data. All HIP2 stars registered in GAIA have their astrometric data replaced from
GAIA DR3 (RA2000, DE2000, pmRA, pmDE, Vrad, Parx, Gmag).
On the other hand, GAIA doesn’t have an explicit value for Vmag, so I put in relation
TYCHO2 and GAIA in order to obtain this field.
So, summing up the whole thing, HIP2 stars without a GAIA reference contain HIP2 astrometric
data, HIP2 stars having a GAIA designation are in effect GAIA stars. TYCHO2 stars without
an HIP2 reference are GAIA stars too.

I worked hard in a Mysql environment for data crossing, everything should be consistent
but I can’t rule out that there is some small mistake somewhere. UrukFSP can be working now
with a maximum of 2,149,498 stars, choosing to use a smaller amount, of course.
All stars in catalogue are always maintained at their maximum level of precision (proper
motion + precession + nutation + annual aberration, diurnal aberration) so the more stars
in use the slower computing time will be.

Datasets were extracted from Vizier portal by means of ADQL TAP queries, individual investigations
were made by querying data from Simbad.

EDIT August 30th :

Ok, let’s take stock of the situation. New stellar archive based on Gaia EDR3 has been completed, and most importantly should be pretty reliable, with no duplicated stars, wrong designations and so on. I’ve been dealing with errors in catalogues: Hipparcos2 contains hundreds stars with negative parallax, due to instrumental problems, Gaia shows stars with no pmRA, pmDE, RadV (235,000 on 35,000,000 I picked up), in my opinion completely useless for my purpose and other small issues.

UrukFSP’s stellar catalogue contains 2,144,767 stars, most of which GAIA stars. Brightest stars basically are HIP2 stars, as these objects saturated GAIA’s sensors, preventing the satellite from making accurate astrometric measurements.

Browsing the catalog has substantially changed. Manage such a high number of stars via a grid makes no sense. I adopted a Simbad-like user interface in order to quickly get the data of a star and eventually go and track it.

Designations can be copied into the clipboard and entered in Simbad for further informations. The box placed below designations acts as a slider (dragging the little black arrow inside the control). Also all the positional corrections applied to a star can be shown (precession, nutation, etc).

Options concerning the Star Catalogue have changed consequently.

(2) Now Real Time position of the International Space Station and its visibility circle are available into the Earth View -> Mercator Projection. No predictions about ISS position, just RT data downloaded from Internet optionally ONLY when RT Clock is activated.

(3) The most 20 relevant stars for historical research have now their window showing rise/transit/set for the current location.

(4) The activation of HOR Flip and VER Flip are now shown on the bottom right side of the graphic window.

(5) UrukFSP now shows a Splash Screen while loading its internal archives.

Debian 11.4

3 thoughts on “** VERSION 1.1 CHANGELOG”

  1. Hi
    As the bright limit magnitude of GAIA DR3 is about G = 3, it is not an easy task to add the missing bright stars from other catalogs.Fortunately you will have a respite of a few years before the publication of DR4 and DR5…
    Regards

  2. Hi
    The USNO Bright Star Catalog (UBSC) is a NEW operational product intended to complement the optical celestial reference frame realized by Gaia by improving the positions
    and proper motions of the optically brightest stars, where Gaia runs into incompleteness
    issues due to instrumental limitations and differences in calibration from fainter sources.
    The UBSC leverages data from the Hipparcos space mission, the USNO Bright-Star
    Astrometric Database [UBAD, Munn et al, 2022], and the USNO Robotic Astrometric
    Telescope [URAT], forming the Hipparcos-UBAD-URAT (HUU) solution. The UBSC
    contains a total of 1423 stars, 68 of which do not have a counterpart in Gaia, and is
    nearly complete to V = 3 mag.
    See : iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ac686d (open source)
    https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ac41d2
    To download the catalog (Excel) : https://crf.usno.navy.mil/icrs (click on USNO Bright Star Catalog)
    Regards

  3. Hi
    The implementation of the new star catalog is very promising.
    Good idea to allow the calculation of the rising, transit and setting of the main stars useful for historical research.
    I look forward to testing all these great improvements soon.
    Regards.

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