Cartes Du Ciel and Large Catalogs

[syousef]

Hi,

Just playing around with various catalogs and Cartes Du Ciel 2 and 3.

First of all, can anyone tell me whether the catalogs at the following address for version 2 can be made to work for version 3?

http://www.stargazing.net/ASTROPC/external.html

There is no magnitude or size tab in the catalog options in Cartes 3 so I tried to use the cds and cdm files supplied with the Gliese catalog, which appear to specify position and length of the individual fields, to enter similar values in Catgen. I sort of got this working but Cartes 3 became unstable and started crashing to the point of being unusable. I intend to have another go at it, but thought I'd ask around first in case I was doing something incredibly stupid and just wasting my time. Do I just need to be more careful and filter the data, or am I going about it all wrong? Are these catalogs available pre-converted somewhere for V3? Does the author have any intention of adding a size and magnitude tab to the new version? (I couldn't find anything on his road map, so I'm guessing not)

Next I'm trying to get my hands on the UCAC-3 catalog. I already have the version for Cartes, and have no trouble using it. However I like to have copies of the original large catalogs to play with. (I already have the HST catalogs, A2.0 and SA2.0) How does the catalog at the following address compare to what I'd have if I managed to get my hands on the USNO UCAC-3 DVD? I know the files are bziped here, but if I unzip them do I have essentially the same thing as what I'd get on the DVD?

http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/ftp-index?/ftp/cats/aliases/U/UCAC3/UCAC3

Next, I wouldn't mind sacrificing 80 GB (times 2 so I have a backup) if I could get my hands on USNO B1.0 legally. Do any amateurs have their hands on this data, and if so how would I go about getting my hands on it?

Finally, does anyone go to the extreme of mirroring SDSS? I understand the latest data set is several terrabytes. I'm not prepared to do that at this stage, but in 10 years who knows where drive capacities might be. I'd be intrigued to hear if anyone has a need or desire to be doing this right now.

[mithrandir]

As an experiment I managed to get the Herschel 2500 and Gliese catalogs to load. I don't understand why but I had to replace any spaces in the first 7 columns of Gliese with zeros to get it to display all rows (except the Sun because RA and Dec are required).

If you want to generate these catalogs I'll upload the prj files.

[syousef]

I thought about deleting the Sun altogether but didn't try it.

Yes please do upload the .prj files. Perhaps even consider sending them to the author for inclusion in a later version?

[bojan]

I would contact the author(s) and ask them.. ?
The catalogues for ver 2 and 3 are different in format..
BTW, ver 3 is still beta, project in progress.. I am using ver 2.76 only (UCAC3 is not a problem, only a large memory is required).

[syousef]

Bojan,

I know 3 is in beta, and I'm actually using a recent SVN snapshot. I didn't want to bother the author until I understood what I was doing a little better. From what I can tell it's a one man show and if he spends all his time helping people like me tinker he won't be able to work on completing and improving Ciel.

Both 2 and 3 are amazing pieces of code. I'm not saying they're bug free, but the bugs aren't show stoppers. From my limited use of trials and a couple of pieces of commercial software, Ciel looks very comparable in terms of features and lots of areas superior. I'm sure there are specific features the others offer and that they have their place but something this comprehensive available to anyone with a decent Internet connection is fantastic.

[bojan]

Totally agree.. CdC is amazing... it does the job adequately and quite frankly, I do not understand some people even considering commercial software when something like this is available to all of us (apart from professionals.. they can claim the cost as business expense I guess).

I would still contact the author.. I am sure he wont mind :-)

BTW, have you seen this page? http://www.ap-i.net/skychart/en/news/ucac3_catalog
At the bottom there are some hints for catgen use..

[mithrandir]

Attached are my Gliese and Herschel catalogs, with the prj files included. Unzip in %ProgramFiles%\Ciel (or whatever the env variable for 32 bit stuff is on 64 bit Windoze). Read the prj files to see where I put the raw data.

If you want to try catgen yourself I think you will have to edit cat\externes\Gliese\catalog.dat to get it to list everything. catgen does not seem to like some rows containing spaces in the ID field but accepts others, and will drop the row for the Sun all by itself.

[syousef]

I might just do that. I had seen that page but thank you kindly for the link.

[syousef]

Thanks very much for being so generous as to supply those files. I'll give them a try, and if I haven't deleted my prj file for Gliese I'll compare the two to see where I went wrong.