Stellar data

[tniemi]

Have anyone of you combined the 3rd Gliese catalogue to the Hipparcos data?

I runned a simple comparison between the two datasets:
http://cc.joensuu.fi/~tniemi/starmaps/G ... parcos.DAT

This is ok (for a start) but the real problem becomes in the combining. (It has to be heuristical.)

Second solution to add more stars would be downloading the NASA Nstars database (which have both the Gliese and the Hipparcos datasets, plus some additional ones.)

The problem is that they have no download possibility in their web site:
http://nstars.arc.nasa.gov/index.cfm

(I even planned to write a small script to fetch the stars via http... That would be a murder to everyone's hardware.)

Another place to get this data would be the SIMBAD:
http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/Simbad

Anyone done this yet?

For a reward here's some 3D plots of our all common backyard:
http://cc.joensuu.fi/~tniemi/starmaps/

TIA,
Tero Niemi
--
tniemi@cc.joensuu.fi

[selden]

fwiw, Grant Hutchison has generated a list of stars within 25LY for use with Celestia. See http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/hutchison/nearstars.html

[tniemi]

Thanks. Downloaded.

I did a rough merge between Hipparcos and Gliese catalogues.
http://cc.joensuu.fi/~tniemi/starmaps/T ... cosPlx.dat

Hipparcos data was used whenever possible. When both Hipparcos and usable Gliese data was present Hipparcos parallax was shifted (inside Hipparcos error margin) towards Gliese.

The result gives approx. 1600 more faint stars (mag > 10) in the space nearer than 25 pcs from sol. (Of course the ground based Gliese data is not as accurate as Hipparcos satellite one is.)

But for 3D plotting purposes only it is quite usable. More faint stars gives a more realistic view to our near space.

[selden]

Tniemi,

What program have you been using to generate your 3D plots?

[tniemi]

LightWave 5 (mostly)

Here's a picture of LW's modeler:
http://cc.joensuu.fi/~tniemi/3d/a1.html
(sorry about the native language)

I borke down the .lwo-format (LightWave object file) in the hex editor and wrote a simple java program to parse the starmaps into these .lwo -objects. The .lwo format is quite simple. (it's based on the Amiga's .iff (or .lbm) -file format) but the real thrill was that I had to write my own text writer too (that writes the starnames with polygons, into the lightwave objects).

I didn't put the java code into (onto?) the web because it's quite ugly. But hey, it did the job!