Celestia Forums

I should add that it would be great if any inconsistencies found by us in SIMBAD were also reported to the SIMBAD staff....My dream is just ONE astronomical world data base that we all can rely on...

Yes, definitely.

your interpretation of my initial request distorts considerably what I meant to express. Residual typos or other remaining (accidental) violations of SIMBAD in the Celestia star database should simply be eliminated as quickly as possible. It's just a bug-fixing task. However, such kinds of "ac...

Gould add-on updated and found at http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/show_addon_details.php?addon_id=1537. For those interested in the Gould Catalogue more generally, the guys at SIMBAD have updated the Vizier catalog page nicely: you can find it at http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?-...

Back after a break looking at other things. I will be compiling an update to my Gould add-on shortly. John V V, I've noted your queries from last time, and will expand the documentation to address these before I submit. My various thoughts generated from this thread: 1. Fridger asked about breaking ...

I wouldn't call these names customary ... but I suppose it's a matter of personal opinion. Since the proposal was for deletions rather than corrections, I don't feel too strongly about it.

From me, many thanks. Regarding the Chinese names, most of them come from a very old book by Allen, who is known to have mixed up various things. I would promote removing the Chinese names, even if we could get an authority to confirm them. (Shouldn't we be using pinyin for Chinese names these days....

Hi John. Thanks for your review of the addon--your comments were passed on to me and I indicated that I would address them & provide a new version. I became distracted by other concerns for a week or two, and then the addon was suddenly added. I intend to follow your suggestions for the next upd...

Initial version uploaded at http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/show_addon_details.php?addon_id=1537 . Includes Gould references, some additional Greek designations missing from SIMBAD, and starting to clean up the proper names (typos, foreign language and non-standard). The Gould designations...

Also: 51 Gem = BQ Gem not Bq; 23 Sex = RS Sex not Rs; 73 Dra = AF Dra not Af. Carina is missing all Lacaille-assigned capital letters from A Car.

Is this the right place to report these?

On the 2nd question, almost all stars brighter than V=7.1, south of +10 degress, were assigned Gould numbers. So in Eridanus, stars are numbered up to 293. See http://www.uranometriaargentina.com/. 81 G Eri is better known as 16 Eri (Tau 4).

I just checked my Millenium and Tirion 2nd ed. atlases. Both say "82 G" . . . But in the end, we're coming from different perspectives, so I can see there's not much interest in the projects I've been proposing. Fair enough. Before heading off, I'd just indicate some typos & non-standa...

I can't say whether they care or not (they merely copied errors from a cross-id database). Gould numbers are not Flamsteed numbers, and if they are treated the same, you will get ambiguities. It's hard enough just getting the Bayer/Flamsteed designations right (see Hoffleit's paper on trying to unra...

I'm a completist too. Ideally, all the Gould numbers that exist should be added, but realistically I don't see the SIMBAD guys doing that, if only because they are busy with other things. I've sent corrections to them before, and single corrections they're quite happy to investigate and correct as r...

Thanks Fridger for your reply, The majority of my contribution would be adding Gould designations, for many stars that otherwise only have catalogue numbers. The Gould numbers that already exist in starnames.dat (e.g. 82 Eri) would be corrected to their proper format. In addition, there are some non...

Hi, I have been testing locally some updates to starnames.dat. They involve running a script to add Gould numbers (at the end of each line), some manual name corrections, and currently I'm starting to go through Morton Wagman's "Lost Stars" to identify star designations that have been omit...