Celestia Forums

Ok... there are often posts of the kind "let's put nebulas in" or "more stars please" or whatever. These are often replyed to with comments about the pragmatics of rendering the objects, but this jumps the gun somewhat. The first step is to figure out if the data exists to model the stuff in the first place, and this means freely available, all-sky astronomical catalogs with both angular position and radial distance fields, so that the 3D position of the objects of that catalog can be modeled in Celestia.
This calls for some research to be done as to what catalogs exist for what kinds of astronomical objects that fit this criteria. If anyone has already compiled a list of such catalogs, I for one would be interested in seeing it. In the meantime, here's a starter and some references:

Stars:
+ Hipparcos - already implimented

Pulsars:
+ Taylor-Manchester-Lyne-Camilo catalog of 550+ pulsars. available via: http://pulsar.ucolick.org/cog/pulsars/catalog

Nebulae:
+ General information, estimated position tables and catalog references on bright, planetary and dark nebulae, as well as open clusters, can be found at http://www.anzwers.org/free/universe/5000lys.html

Milky Way spiral arms:
+ Again, an estimated map, based on current research, found at http://www.anzwers.org/free/universe/milkyway.html

Double / multiple star systems:
+ Washington Double Star Catalog http://ad.usno.navy.mil/wds/

guest wrote:Double / multiple star systems:
+ Washington Double Star Catalog http://ad.usno.navy.mil/wds/

That one will come in handy for the upcoming version

I've found an interesting catalog link at :

http://www.astrosurf.com/lombry/catalogs.html

ogg wrote:Pulsars:
+ Taylor-Manchester-Lyne-Camilo catalog of 550+ pulsars. available via: http://pulsar.ucolick.org/cog/pulsars/catalog

This catalogue would be really good to add, as it will outline the Galactic plane nicely for you.
The nebulae stuff; whatever you do with them, it's probably going to break realism, if
anyone's bothered. There is a (probably definitive, certainly extensive) star catalogue site at

http://adc.gsfc.nasa.gov

I think whether a catalog is "definitive" is difficult to decide. Usually I go by date, but less recent catalogs can often have more/better properties for each object.

I find that it's best to call up a list of all the catalogs matching the desired subject criteria, and then compare these to find the most appropriate (perhaps even the "definitive") one.

I know of no search engine better suited to the task than VizieR:

http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR

Anyone planning to integrate new catalog data into Celestia should go here. Almost all catalogs mentioned in the Atlas Of The Universe site can be found here in their entirety, and queried using a range of useful specifications to create lists of the most approriate objects (say, to select only nebulae that have distance measurements).

VizieR is da bomb!
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