[Kstars-devel] Object catalogs in KStars

[Akarsh Simha]

One of the biggest problems I have with KStars right now is the lack
of deep-sky catalogs.

Of course, the "natural" solution is to add more catalogs and convert
all catalogs to KStars-acceptable format. That is hard work.

If we organize our deep-sky databases well, we can easily work around
this problem using SIMBAD, and feeding off from other astronomy
software -- that way we do only what we are good at doing, and avoid
trying to replicate the work that other FOSS astronomy software, and
professional astronomers have put in.

I think an excellent example of data organization is SIMBAD and
VizieR:
http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad

Here's a sample SIMBAD query result:
http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-basic?Ident=NGC%204898A

Associated with each object is its basic data -- position, magnitudes
in various wavelength bands whenever available, size data whenever
available, and redshift whenever available.

Also associated with each object is a number of catalog
designations. (We now support this in KStars!)

What is even more interesting -- they have an object hierarchy! So
SIMBAD tells me that NGC 4894A is a part of galaxy cluster ACO
1656. SIMBAD also tells me that there are 1000+ other members of this
galaxy cluster.

While the parent -> children hierarchy might not be very important for
most KStars users, sensible magnitudes are. This is one of the bigger
problems in KStars. We need to find a good way of handling data like
magnitude etc.

Regards
Akarsh