[Kstars-devel] Tycho-2 Star catalog lacking Stars?

[Akarsh Simha]

On Sun, Oct 25, 2009 at 12:22:07PM +0100, Lukas Middendorf wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm trying to identify stars on a photograph of M29 and its surrounding and 
> have recognized, that many stars seem to be missing. I have both the Tycho-2 
> and the USNO NOMAD catalogs installed and set star density to a high value, 
> the stars are really missing (superimposed a transparent window of KStars on 
> the photograph).
> M29 is not recognizable in KStars when compared to any photograph and also in 
> the surrounding some "bright" stars are missing.
> 
> All missing stars seem to have a magnitude between 8 and 9.5 (according to 
> stellarium). There are some stars with this magnitudes in the area, so not all 
> of them are missing, but roughly estimated about a quarter of them is missing.
> 
> Are they also missing in the original catalog, or did you lose them in the 
> conversion process for KStars?

Hi Lukas

Thanks for this valuable information. It is very much possible that
there are bugs in both the conversion process and in the drawing code.

It would help if you could tell us which version of KStars you are
using as I fixed some of these bugs some day in the field. Many such
elusive bugs go unnoticed, and I must thank you for excavating these.

It would also help if you could send us a screenshot of the
superimposed photograph indicating the missing stars.

Regards
Akarsh