[Kstars-devel] Inaccurate Catalogs?

[Jason Harris]

Hi Akarsh,

Welcome back!

On Thursday 06 December 2007 02:44:48 pm Akarsh Simha wrote:
> Hi
>
> I happened to observe this galaxy called NGC 2090 through a 10" Telescope.
> While a few other sources show the magnitude of this object to be 11.2
> magnitude, KStars puts it at 11.9 It is impossible that it is 11.9, because
> then I'd have simply not seen it with such a small scope.
>
> What is the source of these catalogs? Is the source accurate?
>
The trouble is, there is no good GPL-compatible deep-sky catalog that I am 
aware of.  The one that ships with kstars was cobbled together by me from 
various public-domain sources, and it's missing a lot of data like photometry 
and size/position angle.  If someone were inclined to do a better job 
creating a GPL-compatible deep-sky catalog, that would be a great way to 
contribute to KStars.

The Steinecke catalog that you can download with the Ctrl+D tool is much 
better.  However, its license specifies that it is free for non-commercial 
uses only, which is not compatible with the GPL, so it can't be included as 
part of KStars.

In the case of NGC 2090, the 11.9 magnitude is from the RC3.  It's a B-band 
magnitude.

regards,
Jason

> Regards
> Akarsh



-- 
KStars: KDE Desktop Planetarium
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