Free UCAC4 DVD star catalog from USNO for US residents

From the information page of the US Naval Observatory:

http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/astrom...l-IR-prod/ucac

" UCAC is an astrometric, observational program, which started in
" February 1998 at CTIO. All sky observations were completed at the
" Naval Observatory's Flagstaff Station in May 2004, and data
" reduction was completed in July 2009. The UCAC3 catalog was
" released on August 10, 2009 at the IAU General Assembly in Rio de
" Janero, Brazil. Bug fixes, reduction improvements, use of NPM
" data for proper motions and inclusion of APASS 5-band photometry
" lead to the final UCAC4.
"
" UCAC4: By mid 2011 a first version of the UCAC4 was produced. It
" was sent to a number of testers worldwide. Feedback comments were
" received and by the end of 2012 an improved version of UCAC4 was
" produced which has further been investigated. Now we have an
" almost final version for about 113 million stars.
"
" UCAC4 does not use any Schmidt plate data. Proper motions of
" faint stars north of Dec = -20 deg are now based on NPM
" data. Besides 2MASS near-IR photometry (as in previous releases)
" UCAC4 now includes APASS 5-band photometry. The APASS data
" release #6 is expected to become available in May 2012 to
" complete the all-sky coverage. It has been decided to wait with
" the UCAC4 release to include APASS DR6 data. Thus the public
" release of UCAC4 is scheduled for June 2012.
"
" The UCAC4 data will be sent to CDS Strasbourg at that time and a
" double-sided DVD with the UCAC4 release files will be sent to
" addresses on our distribution list (UCAC2, UCAC3 customers). In
" order to assist users and 3rd party software vendors to interface
" with UCAC4, the following files are now available:
" [...]

Information how to request the free 2-sided DVD is at the above URL.

I know of two programs that can function with this disk, XEphem and
CdC, and there may be others.

XEphem, the premier UNIX/Linux (and Windows/Cygwin) research program:

http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/xephem/

CdC (Cartes du Ciel aka SkyChart) for Linux and Windows:

http://www.ap-i.net/skychart/start

http://www.ap-i.net/skychart/en/news/ucac4_catalog

Thad

Thad Floryan:

From the information page of the US Naval Observatory:
http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/astrom...l-IR-prod/ucac
" UCAC is an astrometric, observational program, which started in
" February 1998 at CTIO.

...

Information how to request the free 2-sided DVD is at the above URL.
I know of two programs that can function with this disk, XEphem and
CdC, and there may be others.

XEphem, the premier UNIX/Linux (and Windows/Cygwin) research program:
http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/xephem/

CdC (Cartes du Ciel aka SkyChart) for Linux and Windows:
http://www.ap-i.net/skychart/start
http://www.ap-i.net/skychart/en/news/ucac4_catalog

*****

FYI, XEphem runs natively in the Mac OS (BSD UNIX). It requires an
X-Windows environment such as Apple's X-11, which is standard with OS
10.7 and below. Beginning with 10.8 one must download and install
X-Quartz from http://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/. XEphem has
installers that run under the standard Mac OS GUI.

Cartes du Ciel/Skychart, current version and latest beta, is also
available for Mac OS at http://www.ap-i.net/skychart/start.

I'm not absolutely certain about this, but I think that Aladin Sky
Atlas can also use the UCAC catalog. Aladin is a multi-purpose data
visualizer that is particularly handy for astrometry. It may be
downloaded at no charge for Linux, Mac OS, or Windows from
http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr, or it may be run as an applet in a web
browser.

Finally, Astroart for Windows is a versatile application that can do
astrometry as well. It supports the GSC, USNOB, and UCAC2 catalogs. It
may also support UCAC4, at least in future.

--
I agree with almost everything that you have said and almost everything that
you will say in your entire life.

usenet *at* davidillig dawt cawm

On 2/26/2013 6:39 AM, Thad Floryan wrote:
From the information page of the US Naval Observatory:

http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/astrom...l-IR-prod/ucac

" UCAC is an astrometric, observational program, which started in
" February 1998 at CTIO. All sky observations were completed at the
" Naval Observatory's Flagstaff Station in May 2004, and data
" reduction was completed in July 2009. The UCAC3 catalog was
" released on August 10, 2009 at the IAU General Assembly in Rio de
" Janero, Brazil. Bug fixes, reduction improvements, use of NPM
" data for proper motions and inclusion of APASS 5-band photometry
" lead to the final UCAC4.
"
" UCAC4: By mid 2011 a first version of the UCAC4 was produced. It
" was sent to a number of testers worldwide. Feedback comments were
" received and by the end of 2012 an improved version of UCAC4 was
" produced which has further been investigated. Now we have an
" almost final version for about 113 million stars.
"
" UCAC4 does not use any Schmidt plate data. Proper motions of
" faint stars north of Dec = -20 deg are now based on NPM
" data. Besides 2MASS near-IR photometry (as in previous releases)
" UCAC4 now includes APASS 5-band photometry. The APASS data
" release #6 is expected to become available in May 2012 to
" complete the all-sky coverage. It has been decided to wait with
" the UCAC4 release to include APASS DR6 data. Thus the public
" release of UCAC4 is scheduled for June 2012.
"
" The UCAC4 data will be sent to CDS Strasbourg at that time and a
" double-sided DVD with the UCAC4 release files will be sent to
" addresses on our distribution list (UCAC2, UCAC3 customers). In
" order to assist users and 3rd party software vendors to interface
" with UCAC4, the following files are now available:
" [...]

Information how to request the free 2-sided DVD is at the above URL.

I know of two programs that can function with this disk, XEphem and
CdC, and there may be others.

XEphem, the premier UNIX/Linux (and Windows/Cygwin) research program:

http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/xephem/

CdC (Cartes du Ciel aka SkyChart) for Linux and Windows:

http://www.ap-i.net/skychart/start

http://www.ap-i.net/skychart/en/news/ucac4_catalog

Thad



I'm waiting for my copy now. Should be here any day.

There is also an astronomy charting program called C2A that can also
use the data.

Should be interesting !

After you copy the star data from DVD, you'll need to run a Python
script at http://ad.usno.navy.mil/ucac/modifs.py
to correct a few thousand erroneous proper motions. See
http://ad.usno.navy.mil/ucac/readme_fixHPM for details.

I also know that Vega is missing from UCAC4. It might not be the only one.

-- Bill Owen

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 10:43:02 -0500, Davoud wrote:
XEphem, the premier UNIX/Linux (and Windows/Cygwin) research
program:


FYI, XEphem runs natively in the Mac OS (BSD UNIX).

No nere ro point that out, the text above said UNIX, didn't it?

It requires an
X-Windows environment such as Apple's X-11, which is standard with
OS
10.7 and below. Beginning with 10.8 one must download and install

So Xephem runs natively on older versions of Mac-OS, butik the
current Mac-OS needs some extras to run Xephem....

Davoud:
[XEphem] requires an
X-Windows environment such as Apple's X-11, which is standard with
OS 10.7 and below. Beginning with 10.8 one must download and install

Paul Schlyter:
So Xephem runs natively on older versions of Mac-OS, butik the
current Mac-OS needs some extras to run Xephem....

Not exactly. All UNIX versions that I know of require an X-Windows
environment to run GUI software such as XEphem. The Mac OS never came
with such software installed. It used to be on one of the install
disks, and it was an optional install. Now it's on the Internet and is
an optional install. A distinction, one might argue, but one without a
difference: prior to OS 10.8 one needed an X-Windows utility to run
XEphem in the Mac's BSD UNIX environment. Beginning with OS 10.8 one
needs an X-Windows utility to run XEphem in the Mac's BSD UNIX
environment.

Further, it has nothing to do with running "natively." XEphem never ran
on BSD UNIX or any other UNIX without an X-Windows environment
installed.

--
I agree with almost everything that you have said and almost everything that
you will say in your entire life.

usenet *at* davidillig dawt cawm

On 2/26/2013 6:54 PM, Davoud wrote:
Davoud:
[XEphem] requires an
X-Windows environment such as Apple's X-11, which is standard with
OS 10.7 and below. Beginning with 10.8 one must download and install

Paul Schlyter:
So Xephem runs natively on older versions of Mac-OS, butik the
current Mac-OS needs some extras to run Xephem....

Not exactly. All UNIX versions that I know of require an X-Windows
environment to run GUI software such as XEphem. The Mac OS never came
with such software installed. It used to be on one of the install
disks, and it was an optional install. Now it's on the Internet and is
an optional install. A distinction, one might argue, but one without a
difference: prior to OS 10.8 one needed an X-Windows utility to run
XEphem in the Mac's BSD UNIX environment. Beginning with OS 10.8 one
needs an X-Windows utility to run XEphem in the Mac's BSD UNIX
environment.

Further, it has nothing to do with running "natively." XEphem never ran
on BSD UNIX or any other UNIX without an X-Windows environment installed.

Plus Motif header(s) and library(ies). This goes back to the days of
the UNIX wars (50+ different UNIX "flavors" similar to the 350+ Linux
distros today). The author once explained his rationale for Motif in
the Yahoo XEphem support group:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/xephem/

A quick search found this from January 2003:

" IMHO motif and X was an excellent choice for this program and a
" key to why it works on so many variations of X11 and platforms.

FWIW, the necessary components from Motif are in the XEphem tar file
for portability. It took me all of 5 minutes to unpack and compile
XEphem under Cygwin on Windows Vista and it works fine there, too.

Thad

On Feb 26, 6:54*pm, Bill Owen wrote:
After you copy the star data from DVD, you'll need to run a Python
script athttp://ad.usno.navy.mil/ucac/modifs.py
to correct a few thousand erroneous proper motions. *Seehttp://ad.usno.navy.mil/ucac/readme_fixHPMfor details.

I also know that Vega is missing from UCAC4. *It might not be the only one.

-- Bill Owen

You know Bill,the so-called JPL ephemeris time argument is equivalent
to the analemma argument as it tries to work timekeeping averages back
into cyclical dynamical motions of the Earth without realizing that it
is working off the 1461 day system formatted as 365/366 days.The
analemma or the wandering Sun had no substance in terms of the daily
and orbital motions of the Earth even if that misguided perception
lasted for a century and a half but the application of stellar
circumpolar motion to the Earth's dynamics is even more contrived and
convoluted than the analemma.

The reliance on mistakes made centuries ago is truly bewildering,the
objective is to retain the right ascension ideology in all its forms
as a convenience for civil timekeeping,spacecraft
trajectories,predictive astronomy within the calendar format but free
up information that cuts the Earth's daily and orbital motions loose
from the hideous rotating celestial sphere geometry that infects
everything to do with cause and effect.

What is so difficult for a man receiving a salary to reject the
trajectory of reasoning which ties the 24 hour AM/PM system to the Lat/
Long system instead of this utterly irritating attempts to make
planetary dynamics fit into references that do not and never have
worked.

"oriel36" wrote in message
...

On Feb 26, 6:54 pm, Bill Owen wrote:
After you copy the star data from DVD, you'll need to run a Python
script athttp://ad.usno.navy.mil/ucac/modifs.py
to correct a few thousand erroneous proper motions.
Seehttp://ad.usno.navy.mil/ucac/readme_fixHPMfor details.

I also know that Vega is missing from UCAC4. It might not be the only
one.

-- Bill Owen

You know Bill,the so-called JPL ephemeris time argument
==================================================
Don't tell Bill what he knows, you lying so-called Catholic animal thug.
Bill doesn't know what he thought he knew and you don't know anything.

-- This message is brought to you from the keyboard of
Lord Androcles, Zeroth Earl of Medway.
When the fools chicken farmer Wilson and Van de faggot present an argument I
cannot laugh at I'll retire from usenet.

For goodness sake,this is right ascension software that tries to
bundle daily and orbital motions off a common axis even though the
most astonishing images taken from the great Hubble telescope clearly
demonstrate that axial precession as it is presently understood must
be modified to an annual orbital trait as the East to West component
as Uranus turns to the central Sun while daily rotation turns
separately South to North -

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/arc...99/11/video/b/

As clearly as it can possibly be,readers can see that the equation of
time as these two motions are applied to the Earth represents the
uneven rate of change of the orbital component as the Earth speeds up
and slows down.Is this so difficult to understand ?,you cannot do if
if you are all still enamored by right ascension software which is
great for cataloguing and predicting within the calendar format but
not much else.

I am looking at the Mid Jurassic period when the Mid Atlantic Ridge
emerged and created an enormous shift in geological and biological
evolution where the underlying mechanism is possibly differential
rotation in the fluid interior acting to create the spherical
deviation of the Earth and simultaneously create crust at the mid
ocean boundary as the orientation of that ridge runs South to
North.The geomagnetic signatures which fix evolutionary geology to
daily rotation since the Mid Jurassic period don't lie yet here we
have this right ascension cult which borders on a creationist level of
understanding of planetary dynamics unable to move on this rich topics
of research.

Is there any chance that readers can lift astronomy out of right
ascension dullness and look what is in front of them ?