A star catalogue is an

astronomical catalog An astronomical catalogue is a list or tabulation of astronomical objects, typically grouped together because they share a common type, Galaxy morphological classification, morphology, origin, means of detection, or method of discovery. The olde ...

ue that lists

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. In

astronomy Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest includ ...

, 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 years, and this article covers only some of the more frequently quoted ones. Star catalogues were compiled by many different ancient people, including the

Babylonia Babylonia (; , ) was an Ancient history, ancient Akkadian language, Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Kuwait, Syria and Iran). It emerged as a ...

ns,

Greeks Greeks or Hellenes (; , ) are an ethnic group and nation native to Greece, Greek Cypriots, Cyprus, Greeks in Albania, southern Albania, Greeks in Turkey#History, Anatolia, parts of Greeks in Italy, Italy and Egyptian Greeks, Egypt, and to a l ...

, Chinese,

Persians Persians ( ), or the Persian people (), are an Iranian ethnic group from West Asia that came from an earlier group called the Proto-Iranians, which likely split from the Indo-Iranians in 1800 BCE from either Afghanistan or Central Asia. They ...

, and

Arab Arabs (, , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years ...

s. They were sometimes accompanied by a star chart for illustration. Most modern catalogues are available in electronic format and can be freely downloaded from space agencies' data centres. The largest is being compiled from the spacecraft '' Gaia'' and thus far has over a billion stars. Completeness and accuracy are described by the faintest limiting magnitude V (largest number) and the accuracy of the positions.

Historical catalogues

Ancient Near East

From their existing records, it is known that the ancient Egyptians recorded the names of only a few identifiable

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The first constellati ...

s and a list of thirty-six decans that were used as a

star clock A nocturnal is an Mathematical instrument, instrument used to determine the local time based on the star position, position of a star in the night sky relative to the pole star. As a result of the Earth's rotation, any fixed star makes a full revo ...

. The Egyptians called the circumpolar star "the star that cannot perish" and, although they made no known formal star catalogues, they nonetheless created extensive star charts of the night sky which adorn the coffins and ceilings of tomb chambers. Although the ancient

Sumer Sumer () is the earliest known civilization, located in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (now south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. ...

ians were the first to record the names of constellations on

clay tablet In the Ancient Near East, clay tablets (Akkadian language, Akkadian ) were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age. Cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay t ...

s, the earliest known star catalogues were compiled by the ancient Babylonians of

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of ...

in the late 2nd millennium BC, during the Kassite Period (). They are better known by their Assyrian-era name 'Three Stars Each'. These star catalogues, written on clay tablets, listed thirty-six stars: twelve for " Anu" along the celestial equator, twelve for " Ea" south of that, and twelve for "

Enlil Enlil, later known as Elil and Ellil, is an List of Mesopotamian deities, ancient Mesopotamian god associated with wind, air, earth, and storms. He is first attested as the chief deity of the Sumerian pantheon, but he was later worshipped by t ...

" to the north. The Mul.Apin lists, dated to sometime before the

Neo-Babylonian Empire The Neo-Babylonian Empire or Second Babylonian Empire, historically known as the Chaldean Empire, was the last polity ruled by monarchs native to ancient Mesopotamia. Beginning with the coronation of Nabopolassar as the King of Babylon in 626 BC a ...

(626–539 BC), are direct textual descendants of the "Three Stars Each" lists and their constellation patterns show similarities to those of later Greek civilization.

Hellenistic world and Roman Empire

Ancient Greece Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically r ...

, the astronomer and mathematician Eudoxus laid down a full set of the classical

s around 370 BC. His catalogue '' Phaenomena'', rewritten by Aratus of Soli between 275 and 250 BC as a didactic poem, became one of the most consulted astronomical texts in antiquity and beyond. It contained descriptions of the positions of the stars and the shapes of the constellations, and provided information on their relative times of rising and setting. Approximately in the 3rd century BC, the Greek astronomers Timocharis of Alexandria and Aristillus created another star catalogue.

Hipparchus Hipparchus (; , ; BC) was a Ancient Greek astronomy, Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician. He is considered the founder of trigonometry, but is most famous for his incidental discovery of the precession of the equinoxes. Hippar ...

() completed his star catalogue in 129 BC, the earliest known attempt to map the entire sky, which he compared to Timocharis' and discovered that the

longitude Longitude (, ) is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east- west position of a point on the surface of the Earth, or another celestial body. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees and denoted by the Greek lett ...

of the stars had changed over time. This led him to determine the first value of the

precession of the equinoxes In astronomy, axial precession is a gravity-induced, slow, and continuous change in the orientation of an astronomical body's Rotation around a fixed axis, rotational axis. In the absence of precession, the astronomical body's orbit would show ...

. In the 2nd century,

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...

() of

Roman Egypt Roman Egypt was an imperial province of the Roman Empire from 30 BC to AD 642. The province encompassed most of modern-day Egypt except for the Sinai. It was bordered by the provinces of Crete and Cyrenaica to the west and Judaea, ...

published a star catalogue as part of his '' Almagest'', which listed 1,022 stars visible from

Alexandria Alexandria ( ; ) is the List of cities and towns in Egypt#Largest cities, second largest city in Egypt and the List of coastal settlements of the Mediterranean Sea, largest city on the Mediterranean coast. It lies at the western edge of the Nile ...

. Ptolemy's catalogue was based almost entirely on an earlier one by Hipparchus. It remained the standard star catalogue in the Western and

worlds for over eight centuries. The Islamic astronomer al-Sufi updated it in 964, and the star positions were redetermined by Ulugh Beg in 1437, but it was not fully superseded until the appearance of the thousand-star catalogue of

Tycho Brahe Tycho Brahe ( ; ; born Tyge Ottesen Brahe, ; 14 December 154624 October 1601), generally called Tycho for short, was a Danish astronomer of the Renaissance, known for his comprehensive and unprecedentedly accurate astronomical observations. He ...

in 1598. The ancient

Vedic upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the '' Atharvaveda''. The Vedas ( or ; ), sometimes collectively called the Veda, are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed ...

and other scriptures of

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

were very well aware of the astronomical positions and constellations. Both ''Mahabharata'' and ''Ramayana'' provide references to various events in terms of the planetary positions and constellations of that time. The Planetary positions at the time of Mahabharata war has been given comprehensively. A very interesting and exhaustive discussion about the planetary positions along with specific name of constellations appears in a paper by R N Iyengar in the ''Indian Journal of History of Science''.

Ancient China

The earliest known inscriptions for Chinese star names were written on oracle bones and date to the

Shang dynasty The Shang dynasty (), also known as the Yin dynasty (), was a Chinese royal dynasty that ruled in the Yellow River valley during the second millennium BC, traditionally succeeding the Xia dynasty and followed by the Western Zhou d ...

(). Sources dating from the

Zhou dynasty The Zhou dynasty ( ) was a royal dynasty of China that existed for 789 years from until 256 BC, the longest span of any dynasty in Chinese history. During the Western Zhou period (771 BC), the royal house, surnamed Ji, had military ...

( – 256 BC) which provide star names include the ''

Zuo Zhuan The ''Zuo Zhuan'' ( zh, t=左傳, w=Tso Chuan; ), often translated as ''The Zuo Tradition'' or as ''The Commentary of Zuo'', is an ancient Chinese narrative history traditionally regarded as a commentary on the ancient Chinese chronicle the '' ...

'', the ''

Shi Jing The ''Classic of Poetry'', also ''Shijing'' or ''Shih-ching'', translated variously as the ''Book of Songs'', ''Book of Odes'', or simply known as the ''Odes'' or ''Poetry'' (; ''Shī''), is the oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry, co ...

'', and the " Canon of Yao" (堯典) in the ''

Book of Documents The ''Book of Documents'' ( zh, p=Shūjīng, c=書經, w=Shu King) or the ''Classic of History'', is one of the Five Classics of ancient Chinese literature. It is a collection of rhetorical prose attributed to figures of ancient China, a ...

''. The '' Lüshi Chunqiu'' written by the Qin statesman Lü Buwei () provides most of the names for the

twenty-eight mansions The Twenty-Eight Mansions (), also called or , are part of the Chinese constellations system. They can be considered as the equivalent to the Zodiac, zodiacal constellations in Western astronomy, though the Twenty-eight Mansions reflect the move ...

(i.e. asterisms across the

ecliptic The ecliptic or ecliptic plane is the orbital plane of Earth's orbit, Earth around the Sun. It was a central concept in a number of ancient sciences, providing the framework for key measurements in astronomy, astrology and calendar-making. Fr ...

belt of the

celestial sphere In astronomy and navigation, the celestial sphere is an abstract sphere that has an arbitrarily large radius and is concentric to Earth. All objects in the sky can be conceived as being projected upon the inner surface of the celestial sphere, ...

used for constructing the

calendar A calendar is a system of organizing days. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months and years. A calendar date, date is the designation of a single and specific day within such a system. A calendar is ...

). An earlier

lacquerware Lacquerware are objects decoratively covered with lacquer. Lacquerware includes small or large containers, tableware, a variety of small objects carried by people, and larger objects such as furniture and even coffins painted with lacquer. Before ...

chest found in the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng (interred in 433 BC) contains a complete list of the names of the twenty-eight mansions. Star catalogues are traditionally attributed to Shi Shen and Gan De, two rather obscure Chinese astronomers who may have been active in the 4th century BC of the

Warring States period The Warring States period in history of China, Chinese history (221 BC) comprises the final two and a half centuries of the Zhou dynasty (256 BC), which were characterized by frequent warfare, bureaucratic and military reforms, and ...

(403–221 BC). The ''Shi Shen astronomy'' (石申天文, Shi Shen tienwen) is attributed to Shi Shen, and the ''Astronomic star observation'' (天文星占, Tianwen xingzhan) to Gan De. It was not until the

Han dynasty The Han dynasty was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China (202 BC9 AD, 25–220 AD) established by Liu Bang and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–206 BC ...

(202 BC – 220 AD) that astronomers started to observe and record names for all the stars that were apparent (to the

naked eye Naked eye, also called bare eye or unaided eye, is the practice of engaging in visual perception unaided by a magnification, magnifying, Optical telescope#Light-gathering power, light-collecting optical instrument, such as a telescope or microsc ...

) in the night sky, not just those around the ecliptic. A star catalogue is featured in one of the chapters of the late 2nd-century-BC history work ''

Records of the Grand Historian The ''Shiji'', also known as ''Records of the Grand Historian'' or ''The Grand Scribe's Records'', is a Chinese historical text that is the first of the Twenty-Four Histories of imperial China. It was written during the late 2nd and early 1st ce ...

'' by

Sima Qian Sima Qian () was a Chinese historian during the early Han dynasty. He is considered the father of Chinese historiography for the ''Shiji'' (sometimes translated into English as ''Records of the Grand Historian''), a general history of China cov ...

(145–86 BC) and contains the "schools" of Shi Shen and Gan De's work (i.e. the different constellations they allegedly focused on for astrological purposes). Sima's catalogue—the ''Book of Celestial Offices'' (天官書 Tianguan shu)—includes some 90 constellations, the stars therein named after temples, ideas in

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

, locations such as markets and shops, and different people such as farmers and soldiers. For his ''Spiritual Constitution of the Universe'' (靈憲, Ling Xian) of 120 AD, the astronomer

Zhang Heng Zhang Heng (; AD 78–139), formerly romanization of Chinese, romanized Chang Heng, was a Chinese polymathic scientist and statesman who lived during the Han dynasty#Eastern Han (25–220 AD), Eastern Han dynasty. Educated in the capital citi ...

(78–139 AD) compiled a star catalogue comprising 124 constellations. Chinese constellation names were later adopted by the

Korea Korea is a peninsular region in East Asia consisting of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and smaller islands. Since the end of World War II in 1945, it has been politically Division of Korea, divided at or near the 38th parallel north, 3 ...

ns and

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

ese.

Islamic world

A large number of star catalogues were published by Muslim astronomers in the medieval Islamic world. These were mainly '' Zij'' treatises, including Arzachel's '' Tables of Toledo'' (1087), the Maragheh observatory's '' Zij-i Ilkhani'' (1272), and Ulugh Beg's '' Zij-i Sultani'' (1437). Other famous

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

star catalogues include Alfraganus' ''A compendium of the science of stars'' (850) which corrected Ptolemy's ''Almagest''; and al-Sufi's ''

Book of Fixed Stars ''The Book of Fixed Stars'' ( ', literally ''The Book of the Shapes of Stars'') is an Astronomy, astronomical text written by Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi (Azophi) around 964. Following Graeco-Arabic translation movement, the translation movement in the ...

'' (964) which described observations of the

s, their positions, magnitudes, brightness, and

colour Color (or colour in Commonwealth English; see spelling differences) is the visual perception based on the electromagnetic spectrum. Though color is not an inherent property of matter, color perception is related to an object's light absorp ...

, drawings for each

, and the first known description of the Andromeda Galaxy. Many stars are still known by their Arabic names (see

List of Arabic star names This is a list of Arabic star names. In Western astronomy, most of the accepted star names are Arabic, a few are Greek language, Greek and some are of unknown origin. Typically only bright stars have names. History of Arabic star names Very ol ...

Pre-Columbian Americas

The ''Motul Dictionary'', compiled in the 16th century by an anonymous author (although attributed to Fray Antonio de Ciudad Real), contains a list of stars originally observed by the ancient Mayas. The Maya Paris Codex also contains symbols for different constellations which were represented by mythological beings.

Bayer and Flamsteed catalogues

Two systems introduced in historical catalogues remain in use to the present day. The first system comes from the German astronomer Johann Bayer's '' Uranometria'', published in 1603 and regarding bright stars. These are given a

Greek letter The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...

followed by the

genitive case In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive ca ...

of the

in which they are located; examples are

Alpha Centauri Alpha Centauri (, α Cen, or Alpha Cen) is a star system in the southern constellation of Centaurus (constellation), Centaurus. It consists of three stars: Rigil Kentaurus (), Toliman (), and Proxima Centauri (). Proxima Centauri ...

or Gamma Cygni. The major problem with Bayer's naming system was the number of letters in the

Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...

(24). It was easy to run out of letters before running out of stars needing names, particularly for large constellations such as Argo Navis. Bayer extended his lists up to 67 stars by using lower-case Roman letters ("a" through "z") then upper-case ones ("A" through "Q"). Few of those designations have survived. It is worth mentioning, however, as it served as the starting point for variable star designations, which start with "R" through "Z", then "RR", "RS", "RT"..."RZ", "SS", "ST"..."ZZ" and beyond. The second system comes from the English astronomer John Flamsteed's '' Historia coelestis Britannica'' (1725). It kept the genitive-of-the-constellation rule for the back end of his catalogue names, but used numbers instead of the Greek alphabet for the front half. Examples include 61 Cygni and 47 Ursae Majoris.

Full-sky catalogues (in chronological order)

Bayer and Flamsteed covered only a few thousand stars between them. In theory, full-sky catalogues try to list every star in the sky. There are, however, billions of stars resolvable by 21st century

telescope A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, Absorption (electromagnetic radiation), absorption, or Reflection (physics), reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally, it was an optical instrument using len ...

s, so this is an impossible goal; with this kind of catalog, an attempt is generally made to get every star brighter than a given magnitude.

LAL

Jérôme Lalande Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de Lalande (; 11 July 1732 – 4April 1807) was a French astronomer, freemason and writer. He is known for having estimated a precise value of the astronomical unit (the distance from the Earth to the Sun) using measu ...

published the '' Histoire céleste française'' in 1801, which contained an extensive star catalog, among other things. The observations made were made from the Paris Observatory and so it describes mostly northern stars. This catalogue contained the positions and magnitudes of 47,390 stars, out to magnitude 9, and was the most complete catalogue up to that time. A significant reworking of this catalogue by followers of Lalande in 1846 added reference numbers to the stars that are used to refer to some of these stars to this day. The decent accuracy of this catalogue kept it in common use as a reference by observatories around the world throughout the 19th century.

BD/CD/CPD

The '' Bonner Durchmusterung'' (''German'':

Bonn Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region. This ...

sampling) and follow-ups were the most complete of the pre-photographic star catalogues. The ''Bonner Durchmusterung'' itself was published by Friedrich Wilhelm Argelander, Adalbert Krüger, and Eduard Schönfeld between 1852 and 1859. It covered 320,000 stars in epoch 1855.0. As it covered only the northern sky and some of the south (being compiled from the

observatory), this was then supplemented by the ''Südliche Durchmusterung '' (SD), which covers stars between declinations −1 and −23 degrees (1886, 120,000 stars). It was further supplemented by the '' Cordoba Durchmusterung'' (580,000 stars), which began to be compiled at

Córdoba, Argentina Córdoba () is a city in central Argentina, in the foothills of the Punilla Valley, Sierras Chicas on the Primero River, Suquía River, about northwest of Buenos Aires. It is the capital of Córdoba Province, Argentina, Córdoba Province an ...

in 1892 under the initiative of John M. Thome and covers declinations −22 to −90. Lastly, the ''Cape Photographic Durchmusterung'' (450,000 stars, 1896), compiled at the Cape, South Africa, covers declinations −18 to −90. Astronomers preferentially use the HD designation (see next entry) of a star, as that catalogue also gives spectroscopic information, but as the Durchmusterungs cover more stars they occasionally fall back on the older designations when dealing with one not found in Draper. Unfortunately, a lot of catalogues cross-reference the Durchmusterungs without specifying which one is used in the zones of overlap, so some confusion often remains. Star names from these catalogues include the initials of which of the four catalogues they are from (though the ''Southern'' follows the example of the ''Bonner'' and uses BD; CPD is often shortened to CP), followed by the angle of

declination In astronomy, declination (abbreviated dec; symbol ''δ'') is one of the two angles that locate a point on the celestial sphere in the equatorial coordinate system, the other being hour angle. The declination angle is measured north (positive) or ...

of the star (rounded towards zero, and thus ranging from +00 to +89 and −00 to −89), followed by an arbitrary number as there are always thousands of stars at each angle. Examples include BD+50°1725 or CD−45°13677.

HD/HDE

The Henry Draper Catalogue was published in the period 1918–1924. It covers the whole sky down to about ninth or tenth magnitude, and is notable as the first large-scale attempt to catalogue spectral types of stars. The catalogue was compiled by

Annie Jump Cannon Annie Jump Cannon (; December 11, 1863 – April 13, 1941) was an American astronomer whose cataloging work was instrumental in the development of contemporary stellar classification. With Edward C. Pickering, she is credited with the creation of ...

and her co-workers at

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 was named in honour of Henry Draper, whose widow donated the money required to finance it. HD numbers are widely used today for stars which have no Bayer or Flamsteed designation. Stars numbered 1–225300 are from the original catalogue and are numbered in order of

right ascension Right ascension (abbreviated RA; symbol ) is the angular distance of a particular point measured eastward along the celestial equator from the Sun at the equinox (celestial coordinates), March equinox to the (hour circle of the) point in questio ...

for the 1900.0

epoch In chronology and periodization, an epoch or reference epoch is an instant in time chosen as the origin of a particular calendar era. The "epoch" serves as a reference point from which time is measured. The moment of epoch is usually decided b ...

. Stars in the range 225301–359083 are from the 1949 extension of the catalogue. The notation HDE can be used for stars in this extension, but they are usually denoted HD as the numbering ensures that there can be no ambiguity.

AC

The ''Catalogue astrographique'' (Astrographic Catalogue) was part of the international '' Carte du Ciel'' programme designed to photograph and measure the positions of all stars brighter than magnitude 11.0. In total, over 4.6 million stars were observed, many as faint as 13th magnitude. This project was started in the late 19th century. The observations were made between 1891 and 1950. To observe the entire celestial sphere without burdening too many institutions, the sky was divided among 20 observatories, by declination zones. Each observatory exposed and measured the plates of its zone, using a standardized telescope (a "normal

astrograph An astrograph (or astrographic camera) is a telescope designed for the sole purpose of astrophotography. Astrographs are mostly used in wide-field astronomical surveys of the sky and for detection of objects such as asteroids, meteors, an ...

") so each plate photographed had a similar scale of approximately 60 arcsecs/mm. The U.S. Naval Observatory took over custody of the catalogue, now in its 2000.2 edition.

BS, BSC, HR

First published in 1930 as the '' Yale Catalog of Bright Stars'', this catalogue contained information on all stars brighter than

visual magnitude Apparent magnitude () is a measure of the brightness of a star, astronomical object or other celestial objects like artificial satellites. Its value depends on its intrinsic luminosity, its distance, and any extinction of the object's light ca ...

6.5 in the ''Harvard Revised Photometry Catalogue''. The list was revised in 1983 with the publication of a supplement that listed additional stars down to magnitude 7.1. The catalogue detailed each star's coordinates,

proper motion Proper motion is the astrometric measure of changes in the apparent places of stars or other celestial objects as they move relative to the center of mass of the Solar System. It is measured relative to the distant stars or a stable referenc ...

s, photometric data, spectral types, and other useful information. The last printed version of the Bright Star Catalogue was the 4th revised edition, released in 1982. The 5th edition is in electronic form and is available online.

SAO

The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory catalogue was compiled in 1966 from various previous

astrometric Astrometry is a branch of astronomy that involves precise measurements of the positions and movements of stars and other celestial bodies. It provides the kinematics and physical origin of the Solar System and this galaxy, the Milky Way. History ...

catalogues, and contains only the stars to about ninth magnitude for which accurate proper motions were known. There is considerable overlap with the Henry Draper catalogue, but any star lacking motion data at that time is omitted. The

for the position measurements in the latest edition is

J2000.0 In astronomy, an epoch or reference epoch is a moment in time used as a reference point for some time-varying astronomical quantity. It is useful for the celestial coordinates or orbital elements of a celestial body, as they are subject to pe ...

. The SAO catalogue contains this major piece of information not in Draper, the

of the stars, so it is often used when that fact is of importance. The cross-references with the Draper and Durchmusterung catalogue numbers in the latest edition are also useful. Names in the SAO catalogue start with the letters SAO, followed by a number. The numbers are assigned following 18 ten-degree bands in the sky, with stars sorted by

within each band.

USNO-B1.0

USNO-B1.0 is an all-sky catalogue created by research and operations astrophysicists at the U.S. Naval Observatory (as developed at the United States Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station), that presents positions, proper motions, magnitudes in various optical passbands, and star/galaxy estimators for 1,042,618,261 objects derived from 3,643,201,733 separate observations. The data was obtained from scans of 7,435 Schmidt plates taken for the various sky surveys during the last 50 years. USNO-B1.0 is believed to provide all-sky coverage, completeness down to V = 21, 0.2 arcsecond astrometric accuracy at

, 0.3 magnitude photometric accuracy in up to five colors, and 85% accuracy for distinguishing stars from non-stellar objects. USNO-B is now followed by NOMAD; both can be found on the Naval Observatory server. The entire 50GB compressed catalog can be downloaded via

BitTorrent BitTorrent is a Protocol (computing), communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a Decentralised system, decentralized manner. The protocol is d ...

using instructions from Skychart. The Naval Observatory is currently working on B2 and C variants of the USNO catalogue series.

GSC

The ''Guide Star Catalog'' is an online catalogue of stars produced for the purpose of accurately positioning and identifying stars satisfactory for use as guide stars by the

Hubble Space Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope (HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the Orbiting Solar Observatory, first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most ...

program. The first version of the catalogue was produced in the late 1980s by digitizing photographic plates and contained about 20 million stars, out to about magnitude 15. The latest version of this catalogue contains information for 945,592,683 stars, out to magnitude 21. The latest version continues to be used to accurately position the

PPM

The PPM Star Catalogue (1991) is one of the best, both in the proper motion and star position till 1999. Not as precise as the

Hipparcos ''Hipparcos'' was a scientific satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 1989 and operated until 1993. It was the first space experiment devoted to precision astrometry, the accurate measurement of the positions and distances of ...

catalogue but with many more stars. The PPM was built from BD, SAO, HD, and more, with sophisticated algorithm and is an extension for the Fifth Fundamental Catalogue, "

Catalogues of Fundamental Stars The Catalogue of Fundamental Stars is a series of six astrometric catalogues of high precision positional data for a small selection of stars to define a celestial reference frame, which is a standard coordinate system for measuring positions of s ...

HIP

The

Hipparcos catalogue ''Hipparcos'' was a scientific satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 1989 and operated until 1993. It was the first space experiment devoted to precision astrometry, the accurate measurement of the positions and distances of ...

was compiled from the data gathered by the

European Space Agency The European Space Agency (ESA) is a 23-member International organization, international organization devoted to space exploration. With its headquarters in Paris and a staff of around 2,547 people globally as of 2023, ESA was founded in 1975 ...

's astrometric satellite ''

'', which was operational from 1989 to 1993. The catalogue was published in June 1997 and contains 118,218 stars; an updated version with re-processed data was published in 2007. It is particularly notable for its

parallax Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different sightline, lines of sight and is measured by the angle or half-angle of inclination between those two lines. Due to perspective (graphica ...

measurements, which are considerably more accurate than those produced by ground-based observations.

Gaia catalogues

The Gaia catalogues are based on observations made by the ''Gaia'' space telescope. They are released in stages that contain increasing amounts of information; the early releases also miss some stars, especially fainter stars located in dense star fields. Data from every data release can be accessed at the ''Gaia'' archive. Gaia DR1, the first data release based on 14 months of observations made through September 2015, took place on 13 September 2016. The data release includes positions and magnitudes in a single photometric band for 1.1 billion stars using only ''Gaia'' data, positions, parallaxes, and proper motions for more than 2 million stars based on a combination of ''Gaia'' and Tycho-2 data for those objects in both catalogues, light curves, and characteristics for about 3000 variable stars, and positions and magnitudes for more than 2000 extragalactic sources used to define the celestial reference frame. The second data release (DR2), which occurred on 25 April 2018, is based on 22 months of observations made between 25 July 2014 and 23 May 2016. It includes positions, parallaxes, and proper motions for about 1.3 billion stars and positions of an additional 300 million stars, red and blue photometric data for about 1.1 billion stars and single colour photometry for an additional 400 million stars, and median radial velocities for about 7 million stars between magnitude 4 and 13. It also contains data for over 14,000 selected Solar System objects. The first part of the third data release, EDR3 (Early Data Release 3) was released on 3 December 2020. It is based on 34 months of observations and consists of improved positions, parallaxes, and proper motions of over 1.8 billion objects The full DR3, published in June 2022, includes the EDR3 data plus Solar System data; variability information; results for non-single stars, for quasars, and for extended objects; astrophysical parameters; and a special data set, the Gaia Andromeda Photometric Survey (GAPS). The final Gaia catalogue is expected to be released three years after the end of the Gaia mission.

Specialized catalogues

Specialized catalogues make no effort to list all the stars in the sky, working instead to highlight a particular type of star, such as variables or nearby stars.

Aitken's double star catalogue (1932) lists 17,180 double stars north of

−30 degrees.

Carbon stars

Stephenson's General Catalogue of galactic Carbon stars is a catalogue of 7000+ carbon stars.

Gl, GJ, Wo

The Gliese (later Gliese- Jahreiß) catalogue attempts to list all star systems within of

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

ordered by

(see the

List of nearest stars This list covers all known stars, white dwarfs, brown dwarfs, and sub-brown dwarfs within of the Sun. So far, 131 such objects have been found. Only List of nearest bright stars, 22 are bright enough to be visible without a telescope, for whi ...

). Later editions expanded the coverage to . Numbers in the range 1.0–915.0 (Gl numbers) are from the second edition, which was :''Catalogue of Nearby Stars'' (1969, W. Gliese). The integers up to 915 represent systems which were in the first edition. Numbers with a decimal point were used to insert new star systems for the second edition without destroying the desired order (by

). This catalogue is referred to as CNS2, although this name is never used in catalogue numbers. Numbers in the range 9001–9850 (Wo numbers) are from the supplement :''Extension of the Gliese catalogue'' (1970, R. Woolley, E. A. Epps, M. J. Penston and S. B. Pocock). Numbers in the ranges 1000–1294 and 2001–2159 (GJ numbers) are from the supplement :''Nearby Star Data Published 1969–1978'' (1979, W. Gliese and H. Jahreiß). The range 1000–1294 represents nearby stars, while 2001–2159 represents suspected nearby stars. In the literature, the GJ numbers are sometimes retroactively extended to the Gl numbers (since there is no overlap). For example, Gliese 436 can be interchangeably referred to as either Gl 436 or GJ 436. Numbers in the range 3001–4388 are from :''Preliminary Version of the Third Catalogue of Nearby Stars'' (1991, W. Gliese and H. Jahreiß). Although this version of the catalogue was termed "preliminary", it is still the current one , and is referred to as CNS3. It lists a total of 3,803 stars. Most of these stars already had GJ numbers, but there were also 1,388 which were not numbered. The need to give these 1,388 ''some'' name has resulted in them being numbered 3001–4388 (NN numbers, for "no name"), and data files of this catalogue now usually include these numbers. An example of a star which is often referred to by one of these unofficial GJ numbers is GJ 3021.

GCTP

The General Catalogue of Trigonometric Parallaxes, first published in 1952 and later superseded by the New GCTP (now in its fourth edition), covers nearly 9,000 stars. Unlike the Gliese, it does not cut off at a given distance from the Sun; rather it attempts to catalogue all known measured parallaxes. It gives the co-ordinates in 1900 epoch, the secular variation, the proper motion, the weighted average absolute parallax and its standard error, the number of parallax observations, quality of interagreement of the different values, the visual magnitude, and various cross-identifications with other catalogues. Auxiliary information, including UBV photometry, MK spectral types, data on the variability and binary nature of the stars, orbits when available, and miscellaneous information to aid in determining the reliability of the data are also listed.
1952 edition and 1962 supplement.
Louise F. Jenkins, Yale University Observatory. : William F. van Altena, John Truen-liang Lee and Ellen Dorrit Hoffleit, Yale University Observatory, 1995.

Proper motion catalogues

A common way of detecting nearby stars is to look for relatively high proper motions. Several catalogues exist, of which we'll mention a few. The Ross and

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catalogues pioneered the domain: : Ross, Frank Elmore, ''New Proper Motion Stars'', eight successive lists, '' The Astronomical Journal'', Vol. 36 to 48, 1925–1939 : Wolf, Max, "Katalog von 1053 stärker bewegten Fixsternen", Veröff. d. Badischen Sternwarte zu Heidelberg (Königstuhl), Bd. 7, No. 10, 1919; and numerous lists in '' Astronomische Nachrichten'', 209 to 236, 1919–1929 Willem Jacob Luyten later produced a series of catalogues: L – Luyten, Proper motion stars and White dwarfs :Luyten, W. J., ''Proper Motion Survey with the forty-eight inch Schmidt Telescope'',

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

, 1941
''General Catalogue of the Bruce Proper-Motion Survey''
LFT – Luyten Five-Tenths catalogue :Luyten, W. J., ''A Catalog of 1849 Stars with Proper Motion exceeding 0.5" annually'', Lund Press, Minneapolis (Mn), 1955
A catalogue of 1849 stars with proper motions exceeding 0.5" annually.
LHS – Luyten Half-Second catalogue :Luyten, W. J., ''Catalogue of stars with proper motions exceeding 0"5 annually'', University of Minnesota, 1979
LHS catalogue. A catalogue of stars with proper motions exceeding 0"5 annually
LTT – Luyten Two-Tenths catalogue :Luyten, W. J. ''Luyten's Two Tenths. A catalogue of 9867 stars in the Southern Hemisphere with proper motions exceeding 0".2 annually'', Minneapolis, 1957; ''A catalogue of 7127 stars in the Northern Hemisphere with proper motions exceeding 0".2 annually``, Minneapolis, 1961; also supplements 1961–1962.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1961POMin...3h...1

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1962LTTS1.C......0L])'' NLTT – New Luyten Two-Tenths catalogue :Luyten, W. J., ''New Luyten Catalogue of stars with proper motions larger than two tenths of an arcsecond (NLTT)'', Univ. of Minnesota, 1979, supplement 1980
NLTT Catalogue. Volume_III. 0__to -30_.
http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/Cat?I/98A VizieR ???????]) LPM – Luyten Proper-Motion catalogue : Luyten, W. J., ''Proper Motion Survey with the 48 inch Schmidt Telescope'', University of Minnesota, 1963–1981 ::LP numbers: L in zones −45 to −89 deg.; LP in zones +89 to −44 deg. Around the same time period, Henry Lee Giclas worked on a similar series of catalogues: :Giclas, H. L., et al., ''Lowell Proper Motion Survey'', ''Lowell Observatory Bulletin'', 1971–1979
Lowell proper motion survey Northern Hemisphere. The G numbered stars. 8991 stars fainter than magnitude 8 with motions > 0".26/year

Struve Double Star Catalog

Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve discovered a very large number of double stars and in 1827 published his double star catalogue ''Catalogus novus stellarum duplicium''. For example, binary star 61 Cygni is designated "Struve 2758" or "STF 2758". Stars of his catalogue are sometimes indicated by the Greek letter sigma, Σ. Thus, 61 Cygni is also designated as Σ2758.

uvby98

The ''ubvyβ Photoelectric Photometric Catalogue'' is a compilation of previously published photometric data. Published in 1998, the catalogue includes 63,316 stars surveyed through 1996.

ZC catalogue

The Robertson's ''Zodiacal Catalogue'', collected by the astronomer James Robertson, is a catalogue of 3539 zodiacal stars brighter than 9th magnitude. It is mainly used for Star Occultations by the Moon.

Successors to USNO-A, etc

Stars evolve and move over time, making catalogues evolving, impermanent databases at even the most rigorous levels of production. The USNO catalogues are the most current and widely used astrometric catalogues available at present, and include USNO products such as USNO-B (the successor to USNO-A), NOMAD, UCAC and others in production or narrowly released. Some users may see specialized catalogues (more recent versions of the above), tailored catalogues, interferometrically-produced catalogues, dynamic catalogues, and those with updated positions, motions, colors, and improved errors. Catalogue data is continually collected at the Naval Observatory dark-sky facility, NOFS; and the latest refined, updated catalogues are reduced and produced by NOFS and the USNO. See the USNO Catalog and Image Servers for more information and access.

References

Bibliography

External links

Current Public, High-Metric Accuracy Star Catalogues produced by USNO

NASA Astronomy Data Center

Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg

Sloan Digital Sky Survey

IAU FAQ on "Naming Stars"
{{Authority control Astrometry * * Catalogue