About the Starchart Data

The file "stars.dat" contains the star catalog used by 3D Starchart. It contains entries for about 7800 stars. "stars.dat" should not be renamed and should remain in the same folder as 3D Starchart.

BulletHipparchos Catalog & Bright Star Catalog

The data in "stars.dat" was derived from the Hipparchos Star Catalog and the Bright Star Catalog. Description follows:

Description: 
    The Hipparcos and Tycho Catalogues are the primary products of the 
    European Space Agency's astrometric mission, Hipparcos. The satellite, 
    which operated for four years, returned high quality scientific data 
    from November 1989 to March 1993. 

    Each of the catalogues contains a large quantity of very high quality 
    astrometric and photometric data. In addition there are associated 
    annexes featuring variability and double/multiple star data, and solar 
    system astrometric and photometric measurements. In the case of the 
    Hipparcos Catalogue, the principal parts are provided in both printed 
    and machine-readable form (on CDROM). In the case of the Tycho 
    Catalogue, results are provided in machine-readable form only (on 
    CDROM). Although in general only the final reduced and calibrated 
    astrometric and photometric data are provided, some auxiliary files 
    containing results from intermediate stages of the data processing, of 
    relevance for the more-specialised user, have also been retained for 
    publication. (Some, but not all, data files are available from the 
    Centre de Donnees astronomiques de Strasbourg.) 

    The global data analysis tasks, proceeding from nearly 1000 Gbit of 
    raw satellite data to the final catalogues, was a lengthy and complex 
    process, and was undertaken by the NDAC and FAST Consortia, together 
    responsible for the production of the Hipparcos Catalogue, and the 
    Tycho Consortium, responsible for the production of the Tycho 
    Catalogue. A fourth scientific consortium, the INCA Consortium, was 
    responsible for the construction of the Hipparcos observing programme, 
    compiling the best-available data for the selected stars before launch 
    into the Hipparcos Input Catalogue. The production of the Hipparcos 
    and Tycho Catalogues marks the formal end of the involvement in the 
    mission by the European Space Agency and the four scientific 
    consortia. 

    For more complete and detailed information on the data, the user is 
    advised to refer to Volume 1 ("Introduction and Guide to the Data", 
    ESA SP-1200) of the printed Hipparcos and Tycho Catalogues. The user 
    should also note that in order to convert the Double and Multiple 
    Systems (Component solutions) data file hip_dm_c.dat into FITS format 
    it is first necessary to filter the file according to whether the 
    entry is a component record (identified by COMP in field DCM5) or a 
    correlation record (identified by CORR in field DCM5) because of the 
    different structures of the respective records. On a Unix system this 
    can be achieved as follows: 

    grep COMP hip_dm_c.dat > h_dm_com.dat 
    grep CORR hip_dm_c.dat > h_dm_cor.dat 

    The catalogue description file (this file) gives the relevant 
    information for converting the main data files, including h_dm_cor.dat 
    and h_dm_com.dat, into FITS format. 

    The machine readable data files (i.e. those available on CD-ROM and 
    the subset available from the CDS) contain several extra fields in 
    addition to the data from the printed catalogue. These fields are 
    identified by the letter `M' in the data label (e.g. the field DGM1 
    contains data only available in the machine readable file 
    hip_dm_g.dat).

The above catalog and others can be found at http://adc.gsfc.nasa.gov/

If you are just interested in the above catalogs, they are at:
Hipparchos Catalog
Bright Star Catalog

BulletStars.dat Format

If you add additional stars or convert another ( larger perhaps ) catalog, the format used in "stars.dat" is as follows:

[Star Name / Notes]
[Spectral Class] [Absolute Magnitude] [x] [y] [z]

See the included project "stellarcoordinates" for converting parallax, Right Ascension, and Declination to x,y,z coordinates.

Consecutive entries with the same x,y,z coordinates are interpreted as binary/ multiple star systems. The first entry in such a group should be the primary ( brightest ) star.

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