Hi everyone.
In the future, I'm thinking of automatically generating a catalog of binary and multiple stars. One of the difficulties is actually finding a suitable data source for this. In default Celestia, there are two sources:
Pourbaix (2000). "Resolved double-lined spectroscopic binaries: A neglected source of hypothesis-free parallaxes and stellar masses"
Söderhjelm (1999). "Visual binary orbits and masses post Hipparcos"
In both of these, what makes them usable for automated catalogues is that they have all (or most) of the information needed for a Celestia definition. They have "full" orbits (by "full" I mean P, a, e, i, Ω, ω, T0, not including any information on whether the full 3D information is known), as well as component masses, magnitudes, and spectral types.
I'm struggling to find any catalogues that come close to this sort of completeness. Of course, the Sixth Orbit Catalog has orbits and magnitudes, but no component masses or spectral types. Can anybody point me towards any other potential sources? In the end, I'm pretty sure this will involve cobbling together several catalogues.
Thanks,
LukeCEL