[Kstars-devel] Inaccurate Catalogs?

[Jason Harris]

Hi,

Yes, there are many missing fields in the default ngcic catalog, and it would 
be great to get an improved catalog for the release.  I'll write to 
saguaroastro and ask their permisssion to include their catalog.

On Friday 07 December 2007 12:38:51 am Akarsh Simha wrote:
> Many more inaccuracies:
> NGC 3550 is 14th magnitude but reported as 1.7 in our catalogs!
> M27 has no magnitude defined!
> M57 is shown to be 14+ magnitude while it is brighter than 10th mag!
> Many Messier nebulae don't have magnitude defined (and this is messing
> up the output of the Observing List)
>

M 57 (NGC 6720) is listed as having mag=14.7 here also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NGC_objects_(6000-6999)

On this page, it's stated that that is the brightness of the central white 
dwarf; the nebula itself is 9th mag:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_6720

NGC 3550 is not even listed at wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NGC_objects_(3000-3999)
I have no idea where we got the bizarre value of 1.78.  There are other 
ridiculous numbers in there as well...

Many of these issues are "solved" by downloading the Steinicke catalog.  Once 
users do that, they'll have a much better experience (although even Steinicke 
has some missing magnitudes)

> I think we should try our best to replace this catalog with something
> more accurate before the release.
>
> BTW, when is the release?