The Catalogue of Fundamental Stars is a series of six
astrometric catalogues of high precision positional data for a small selection of
star
A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...
s to define a celestial
reference frame, which is a standard coordinate system for measuring positions of stars.
Publication history
The six volumes in the fundamental catalogue series are as follows:
The ''Fundamental-Catalog'' (FC) was compiled by
Auwers and published in two volumes. The first volume, published in 1879, contains 539 stars. The second volume, published in 1883, contains 83 stars from the southern sky.
The ''Neuer Fundamentalkatalog'' (NFK) was compiled by J. Peters and contained 925 stars.
[
The ''Third Fundamental Catalogue'' (FK3) was compiled by Kopff and published in 1937, with a supplement in 1938.][
The ''Fourth Fundamental Catalogue'' (FK4) was published in 1963, and contained 1,535 stars in various equinoxes from 1950.0.
The ''Fourth Fundamental Catalogue's Supplement'' (FK4S) was an amendment to FK4 that contains a further 1,987 stars.][
The ''Fifth Fundamental Catalogue'' (FK5) was a 1988 update of FK4 with new positions for the 1,535 stars. It was superseded by the ]quasar
A quasar ( ) is an extremely Luminosity, luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN). It is sometimes known as a quasi-stellar object, abbreviated QSO. The emission from an AGN is powered by accretion onto a supermassive black hole with a mass rangi ...
-based International Celestial Reference Frame
The International Celestial Reference System (ICRS) is the current standard celestial reference system adopted by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Its origin is at the barycenter of the Solar System, with axes that are intended to "sho ...
(ICRF).
The ''Fifth Fundamental Catalogue Extension'' (FK5), published in 1991, added 3,117 new stars.
The ''Sixth Fundamental Catalogue'' (FK6) is a 2000 update of FK5 correlated with the ICRF through the '' Hipparcos'' satellite. It comes in two parts: FK6(I) and FK6(III). FK6(I) contains 878 stars, and FK6(III) contains 3,272 stars. Both are updated and amended versions of FK5 using '' Hipparcos Catalogue'' data.
Examples
* Iota Arietis is located in FK5 as item 2132
* Alpha Arietis is FK5 item 74
* Kappa Aurigae is FK5 item 1168
See also
* '' Gaia'', a star catalogue mission launched in 2013 covering approximately 1billion astronomical object
An astronomical object, celestial object, stellar object or heavenly body is a naturally occurring physical entity, association, or structure that exists within the observable universe. In astronomy, the terms ''object'' and ''body'' are of ...
s
* International Celestial Reference System and Its Realizations, the current IAU approved reference frames in radio and optical wavelengths
References
External links
*
Fifth Fundamental Catalogue
' (1988)
*
''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Catalogues Of Fundamental Stars
Astronomical catalogues of stars