[Stardata-common-devel] Preliminary Hipparcos data packages

[Kevin B. McCarty]

Hi guys,

I prepared preliminary Debian packages of the Hipparcos data.  You can
find them here:  http://starplot.org/hipparcos/ (sorry, not currently
apt-gettable)

Please let me know what you think.  I wrote them to be compliant with
the stardata policy.  I also attach a quick draft of a StarPlot .spec
file for the Hipparcos data.  (The data file uses a funny format for
Durchmusterung [BD, CP, CD] designations which starconvert doesn't
currently recognize, by the way.  I'll have to release a new point
version of StarPlot to fix this.)

There are five binary packages.  One (hipparcos-base) is documentation
common to everything else.  Three (stardata-hipparcos-{60pc,120pc,all})
provide different subsets of the main Hipparcos catalog.  Since each of
them has a symlink /usr/share/stardata/hipparcos/catalog.dat ->
hip_main<suffix>.dat, these three packages Conflict/Replace with each
other and all provide a stardata-hipparcos virtual package.  The final
package, stardata-hipparcos-addenda, contains the other
Hipparcos-related catalogs (multiple stars, variable stars, etc.).

Note: please don't upload any of these packages to the Debian archive
yet, I want to double check on the copyright with "upstream" (the
Hipparcos project) first.  I imagine they may need more work anyway.

Although it doesn't directly affect these packages, there is a slightly
annoying issue in that the Spacechart converter from the Hipparcos
catalogue to Spacechart format also requires another star catalog, the
CCDM.  I'll have to look and see if there is a way around that using
Hipparcos data only.

regards,

-- 
Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty at princeton.edu>   Physics Department
WWW: http://www.princeton.edu/~kmccarty/    Princeton University
GPG: public key ID 4F83C751                 Princeton, NJ 08544

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# starconvert specification file for Hipparcos catalog

[coordinates]
type; celestial

ra-hours; 18; 19
ra-min;   21; 22
ra-sec;   24; 28

dec-sign; 30
dec-deg;  31; 32
dec-min;  34; 35
dec-sec;  37; 40

[characteristics]
specclass;           436; 447

distance; milliarcsec; 80; 86; 120; 125; 0.25 # exclude parallax err > 25%
magnitude; visual;   275; 281

distance; specclass
magnitude; visual;   275; 281

[systems]
# haven't yet figured out how to extract multiple star data from catalog

[names]
other;		391; 396; HD # HD number
dm;		398; 407 # BD
dm;		409; 418 # CD
dm;		420; 429 # CP
other;		3; 14; HIP # Hipparcos catalog number