The Bright Star Catalogue, also known as the Yale Catalogue of Bright Stars, Yale Bright Star Catalogue, or just YBS, is a

star catalogue A star catalogue is an astronomical catalogue that lists stars. In astronomy, many stars are referred to simply by catalogue numbers. There are a great many different star catalogues which have been produced for different purposes over the year ...

that lists all stars of stellar magnitude 6.5 or brighter, which is roughly every star visible to the naked eye from Earth. The catalog lists 9,110 objects, of which 9,095 are stars, 11 are novae or

supernova A supernova (: supernovae or supernovas) is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. A supernova occurs during the last stellar evolution, evolutionary stages of a massive star, or when a white dwarf is triggered into runaway nuclear fusion ...

e (which were "bright stars" only at the time when they were at their peak), and four are non-stellar objects which are the

globular cluster A globular cluster is a spheroidal conglomeration of stars that is bound together by gravity, with a higher concentration of stars towards its center. It can contain anywhere from tens of thousands to many millions of member stars, all orbiting ...

s 47 Tucanae (designated HR 95) and NGC 2808 (HR 3671), and the

open cluster An open cluster is a type of star cluster made of tens to a few thousand stars that were formed from the same giant molecular cloud and have roughly the same age. More than 1,100 open clusters have been discovered within the Milky Way galaxy, and ...

s NGC 2281 (HR 2496) and Messier 67 (HR 3515). The catalogue is fixed in number of entries, but its data is maintained, and it is appended with a comments section about the objects that has been steadily enhanced. The abbreviation for the catalog as a whole is BS or YBS but all citations of stars it indexes use HR before the catalog number, a homage to the catalog's direct predecessor, published in 1908, named the ''Harvard Revised Photometry Catalogue''.

History

The earliest predecessor of the YBSC, titled ''Harvard Photometry'', was published in 1884 by the

Harvard College Observatory The Harvard College Observatory (HCO) is an institution managing a complex of buildings and multiple instruments used for astronomical research by the Harvard University Department of Astronomy. It is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United St ...

under the supervision of Edward Charles Pickering, and contained about 4,000 stars. Following its release, Pickering promoted a broader stellar survey for the southern celestial hemisphere, equally as thorough as the ''Harvard Photometry'' of 1884. This

photometry Photometry can refer to: * Photometry (optics), the science of measurement of visible light in terms of its perceived brightness to human vision * Photometry (astronomy), the measurement of the flux or intensity of an astronomical object's electr ...

work was carried out by Solon I. Bailey between 1889 and 1891, leading to the publication of the ''Revised Harvard Photometry'' in 1908. The new catalogue contained stars down to

magnitude Magnitude may refer to: Mathematics *Euclidean vector, a quantity defined by both its magnitude and its direction *Magnitude (mathematics), the relative size of an object *Norm (mathematics), a term for the size or length of a vector *Order of ...

6.5 in both hemispheres, for which John A. Parkhurst continued work through the 1920s. The Yale Bright Star Catalogue has been steadily enhanced since the Yale astronomer Frank Schlesinger published the first version in 1930; even though the YBS is limited to the 9110 objects already in the catalog, the data for the objects already listed is corrected and extended, and it is appended with a comments section about the objects. The edition of 1991 was the fifth in order, a version that introduced a considerable enhancement of the comments section, to a little more than the size of the catalogue itself. This most recent edition, in addition to several previous editions, was compiled and edited by Ellen Dorrit Hoffleit of

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

. The Harvard Revised Photometry, based on visual observations, has been superseded by photo-electric measurements using band pass filters, most prominently the UBV photometric system. This can differ substantially (up to 1.8 magnitudes ) from the older system. Hence many stars brighter than V=6.50 are not in the YBSC (and hundreds of stars in the YBSC are fainter than V=6.50). Dorrit Hoffleit with Michael Saladyga and Peter Wlasuk published in 1983 a Supplement with an additional 2603 stars for which a V magnitude of brighter than 7.10 had been measured at that time.

Editions

There have been one predecessor, and five editions of the YBS Catalog: * predecessor – ''Revised Harvard Photometry'' (1908) *1st edition – ''Catalogue of Bright Stars'' (1930) *2nd edition – ''Catalogue of Bright Stars'' (1940) *3rd edition – ''Catalogue of Bright Stars'' (1964) *4th edition – ''The Bright Star Catalogue'' (1982) ** Supplement – ''A Supplement to the Bright Star Catalogue'' (1983) * 5th edition – ''The Bright Star Catalogue'' (1991), which exists only in electronic form, not in book form.

References

External links

* Provides a link to a program "sbsc" for consulting the Bright Star Catalog. * * * {{cite web , url=https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/V/36B , title=Online version of the supplement to the 4th edition of the catalog Harvard University Yale University Astronomical catalogues of stars

History

Editions

See also

Astronomical topics

Astronomers

References

External links