1. Simulation Curriculum Corp.
  2. Community
  3. Starry Night 8 | User Support
New post
1

How To Find Tycho Star Catalogue Numbers Using SIMBAD? (Answer: Read On!)

Example star is a blue straggler that's about 200,000 light years outside Milky Way galaxy...a rare intergalactic star which is a very interesting concept to me.

(Imaging living on a planet orbiting that star...the nearest stars are 200,000 light years away but the Milky Way must look HUGE as it completely dominates the sky.)

HE 0437-5439

That number above is not in SN8P database.  I hoped to find the TYC number or even a HIP number.

I found SIMBAD hard to use, or else there is just no Tycho or HIP number assigned yet.

Steve Sybesma

 

Date Votes

5 comments

  • 0
    Avatar
    Dlucas

    In this case, Steve, you might have stumped Starry Night Pro. It's star catalog is probably from Tyc and US NO lists, which pre-date the 2005 discovery of your blue straggler, HE 0437-5439. Since HE 0437-5439 is only 17 years old, it might not be listed in Starry Night Pro. We'll have to ask Keiron about this one. Keiron? 

    As for using Simbad, the reason you found it hard to come up with a Tyc number is that, again, the Tyc. database pre-dates the 2005 discovery of this object. So from what I can see, there is NO Tyc number.

    By the way, if you prefer, just start your search in Google with search terms like, "HE 0437-5439 wiki." There's a great wikipedia entry on your blue straggler.

    Hope that helps!

    Doug

  • 0
    Avatar
    steve

    Hello Doug,

    Thanks for the explanation...so the databases haven't been able to keep up with recent discoveries and that makes sense.

    I read about that star on Wikipedia years ago and never knew there were such things but searched for that just because I wondered if they existed.

    Awfully interesting to imagine yourself there...what would the sky look like?

    The ability to detect a single star that far away seems almost impossible but there are probably very many of them.

    (Think of all the intervening gas and dust that would block light from just one star.)

    Steve

  • 0
    Avatar
    Dlucas

    Well, that's my theory. We'll see if Keiron supports it when he responds later. : )

    You're right - it would be incredible.

  • 0
    Avatar
    steve

    I found that HE stands for Hamburg ESO...wonder if an SSD file exists for that.

    Is there a central location for all the SSD files that can be downloaded and added to SN?

  • 0
    Avatar
    Dlucas

    Hi Steve. On my laptop, SNP stores USNO (star) data at

    "C:\Users\[Windows User name]\AppData\Local\Simulation Curriculum\Starry Night 8 Prefs\Sky Data\USNO"

    But it's difficult to prepare those files.

    I know of no central location where these files are stored or downloaded.

    Keiron might know of a way?

Please sign in to leave a comment.