Harvard Reference Number view/search

[Machete]

Hi! I'm looking for a way to search and view the Yale Bright Star Catalogue HR number of the stars. I currently have to look for them in google sky or MS Worldwide telescope, get their name and then search on celestia, as you can see, it would be nice to have that built in in celestia.

Currently one can see Hypparcos, HD and SAO of the stars. Is there a way to add HR capabilities? Thanks!

[chris]

We're working on add some more cross indices for the next Celestia version. Andrew (ajtribick) has produced a number of new cross indices that I'd like to use, though not yet one for HR numbers. Anyone has a link to an HR to HIPPARCOS number index?

--Chris

[t00fri]

We're working on add some more cross indices for the next Celestia version. Andrew (ajtribick) has produced a number of new cross indices that I'd like to use, though not yet one for HR numbers. Anyone has a link to an HR to HIPPARCOS number index?

--Chris

What catalogs are included? How has the cross-index been obtained? Didn't know about this effort by Andrew...

F.

[ajtribick]

So far I've generated cross-indices for Variable star names (from the cross-identifications table of the GCVS), including NSV ####, LMC V#### and SMC V####; and also for Flamsteed/Bayer/Roman-letter "Bayer" designations (from the HD-DM-GC-HR-HIP-Bayer-Flamsteed Cross Index) - though for this latter one there is a small amount of hand-editing (referenced to SIMBAD) as multiple star designations are not included, plus there are one or two conflicting designations. The hand-editing is documented though not in a particularly reader-friendly format at present.

It should also be easy to generate cross-indices for the Durchmusterungs as these are included in HIC, and also a TYC-HIP cross index for those Hipparcos stars which also have TYC designations (the HIP number is included in the TYC catalogue entries).

I'll take a look at HR and Gl/GJ at some point, though this may well be more tricky, as these catalogues are not included in the HIC/HIP catalogues. (Note the HD-DM-GC-HR-HIP-Bayer-Flamsteed cross index does not include stars which do not have Bayer or Flamsteed designations, which means generating an HR-HIP cross-index from this source would result in incompleteness).

[t00fri]

Fine, Andrew,

so I was lucky to learn about it

What scripting dialect did you use? Is it human readable?
After all, I generated cross indices for years e.g. among galaxies and binaries, by merging up to 10 catalogs...

Did you send your cross index and the script only to Chris or can I also have a look at it?

Fridger

[ajtribick]

Heh, well the code is in embarrassingly hacky Visual Basic.NET (hey, I learned programming on a BBC Micro, so BASIC's what I'm most used to, and besides, I like the string-handling facilities )

I was going to translate it to something which isn't so platform-specific (such as PERL, or failing that C) and better commented before posting anything here, since I knew the first thing that would get asked was to have the source code for the file!!! Then exam term got in the way.

[t00fri]

Heh, well the code is in embarrassingly hacky Visual Basic.NET (hey, I learned programming on a BBC Micro, so BASIC's what I'm most used to, and besides, I like the string-handling facilities )

I was going to translate it to something which isn't so platform-specific (such as PERL, or failing that C) and better commented before posting anything here, since I knew the first thing that would get asked was to have the source code for the file!!! Then exam term got in the way.

You see, we need a complete documentation of the data base sources in Celestia's tarball. PERL scripting is perfectly suited for this: it's easy to learn, multi-OS and human readable. It also would be good to have your endeavours fit to what exists already. If you have some questions with PERL, please don't hesitate.

Fridger

[ajtribick]

I've just upgraded to the latest Ubuntu and for the first time am compiling Celestia from source (I'm using the KDE version since compiling the GNOME version from SVN resulted in glitches -- the one thing I miss from Windows is the infinite mouse), and have taken a look at your PERL scripts in the src/tools directory, it looks like most of the things my programs do can be easily (in some cases more easily!) implemented in PERL. I've used PERL a couple of times before, so hopefully I won't get too mangled by it.

(While I'm at it, can someone tell me if the scripts for the generation of the HD and SAO cross-indices are anywhere, because I haven't found them.)

[chris]

I've just upgraded to the latest Ubuntu and for the first time am compiling Celestia from source (I'm using the KDE version since compiling the GNOME version from SVN resulted in glitches -- the one thing I miss from Windows is the infinite mouse), and have taken a look at your PERL scripts in the src/tools directory, it looks like most of the things my programs do can be easily (in some cases more easily!) implemented in PERL. I've used PERL a couple of times before, so hopefully I won't get too mangled by it.

You may also want to consider Python. It's widely used for text processing, supported on all platforms, and has a much cleaner syntax (considerably easier to read) than Perl. But your current Visual Basic files are also just fine with me.

(While I'm at it, can someone tell me if the scripts for the generation of the HD and SAO cross-indices are anywhere, because I haven't found them.)

I've got them somewhere . . . I'll probably have to do some archaeology to find them though.

--Chris

[ajtribick]

You may also want to consider Python. It's widely used for text processing, supported on all platforms, and has a much cleaner syntax (considerably easier to read) than Perl. But your current Visual Basic files are also just fine with me.

Looking at the tools directory, we've already got C, C++ and PERL floating around in there, we probably shouldn't further increase the number of languages we've got going. Besides there's the platform-independence issue. Given the amount of regular expressions I'm using I think PERL is probably best for the job here.

[t00fri]

You may also want to consider Python. It's widely used for text processing, supported on all platforms, and has a much cleaner syntax (considerably easier to read) than Perl. But your current Visual Basic files are also just fine with me.


--Chris

Are your really serious about encouraging another scripting language into Celestia's data base extraction/documentation sector ?? After all there are my PERL scripts of > 1000 lines for the galaxies and also for binary orbits...

PERL is really an ideal language for these tasks.

Fridger