Last touched 2001 December 4
Originally published in M-111, the Newsletter of the Richland (Ohio) Astronomical Society
March, 1991
Listing of Non-stellar Astronomical Catalogues Available for MS-DOS Computers
Collected and transferred to MS-DOS by Robert Bunge
The machine readable copies of this collection of astronomical data are (sort of) free to all. Most of these catalogues were attained from U.S. government sources and are open records. The only stipulation is that any documentation (docs) are ALWAYS included in any future transfer. Most of these catalogues were produced by professional astronomers, often while in the process of long term projects. Normally, but not always, extensive reference to the data in any one catalogue(s) can be found in professional literature. These references are normally listed in the documentation supplied with the catalogue.
My primary purpose to collect these data, starting several years ago, was to construct an atlas second to none. Uranometria solved that problem. So these days I'm mostly interested that amateurs have the best and most accurate data available at their finger tips. By digging into these catalogues, observers will find hundreds of unique observing projects never before done. While sometimes dated, many of these catalogues, like the UGC, ESOUPP, RNGC and Strasbourg Planetary Catalogue are the standard references used by professionals and amateurs alike. Enjoy.
To obtain a copy of any of these catalogues, please send the proper number of formatted DD 5.25?inch floppy disk(s) or 720k 3.5?inch disk(s) along with a 8x10?inch SASE.
*****NOTE*****
I NEED the 8x10 envelope in order to mail copies of catalogue documentation. I will NOT distribute catalogues WITHOUT supplying documentation (if available).
Requests for large numbers or all of the listed catalogues may be delayed unless a donation is enclosed to cover the cost of making photocopies of the documentation (I am a poor college student and have to pay $.10 per page copied) until I acquire funding for the copying costs. Docs average about 10 pages each. It costs me at least $20 to make a complete set of docs for all of the catalogues on the list. Currently the entire collection fits on seven 720k 3.5?inch floppies and the stack of documentation is about an inch high.
NOTE: All of these files are compressed with the shareware compression programs PKZIP or PKARC. These shareware decompression programs are also available and will be included if requested. Please request these shareware programs if you do not have them. They are also located on hundreds of BBS's across the country. Most files will expand to at least twice their current size. In some cases, much more. Compressed files larger than the size of a disk will be split using a program called SBREAK and may be recombined using the DOS binary copy command (Instructions will be included).
I want to thank the following people for aiding me in the collection of these data. Dr. Walter Mitchell, for allowing me to use his Wylbur account at Ohio State University to read 9 track tapes and download files. Perry Moon, of the Columbus Astronomical Society for at one point GIVING me a 1200 baud modem. Dan Kaiser, of Columbus, Indiana for his kind transfer of the ESO catalogue from a NASA CD?ROM. Dr. Robert H. Dixon, Director of Academic Computing Systems at Ohio State, who allowed me to be one of the first non?computer science undergraduates to have an E? mail account. Also, Dr. Richard Pogge, a postdoc at Ohio State for transferring the IRAS Associations catalogue from FITS format to ASCII and Brent Archinal of the U.S. Naval Observatory and follow amateur for his help and advice. Finally, and most of all, the much under?staffed workers at the Astronomical Data Center (ADC) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. In particular, Dr. Wayne Warren and LaDonna H. Earl.
The following list is my current collection of catalogues (Hope to add more in the near future).
Docs column flags:
H - Hard copy documents. D - Documentation on Disk ? normally in the compressed file. N - No documentation available.
FILE NAME SIZE DOCS Short description PKUNZIP EXE 21440 ? Program to decompress .ZIP files PKXARC COM 12242 ? Program to decompress .ARC files BRIGHT ARC 24983 H Lynds Bright Nebula DARK ARC 43095 H Lynds Dark Nebula RNGC ARC 326150 H Revised New General Catalogue ICCON ARC 112910 N Index Catalogue w/constellations PLANET ZIP 21489 H* Strasbourg Planetary Cat.(PK) UGC ARC 337925 H Uppsala General Catalogue CGCG ARC 225671 H Cat. of Gal. and Clusters of Gal. (Zwicky) HEADER ARC 7695 H Headers for CGCG ABELL ARC 135397 H Abell Clusters of Galaxies NEARBY ZIP 2466 H Nearby Clusters of Galaxies COMPACT ZIP 2546 H Compact Clusters of Galaxies TRIPLES ZIP 6824 H 84 Galaxy Triplets MCG ARC 529071 H Morphological Galaxy Catalogue PCRNGC ARC 158870 D A smaller version of the RNGC ESO 001 650000 D Europ. Sou. Obser. Cat., part 1 ESO 002 211099 D File #2 of the ESOUPP ESOREAD ME 1139 ? Instructions for ESO NEARBYG ZIP 153191 H 2810 nearby galaxies SGC ARC 253254 N Southern Galaxy Catalogue GLOB ZIP 7522 N 160 Globular clusters GLOBARP ZIP 1995 H Arp's Globular clusters PAIRS ZIP 27061 H 603 pairs of galaxies PECULI ZIP 6133 H Redshifts of Peculiar Galaxies ISOLATED ZIP 19632 H 1051 isolated galaxies IRAS ZIP 359836 D IRAS association cat. (decent cross reference) HII ZIP 12953 H 313 HII regions REFLECT ZIP 5129 H 158 Reflection Nebulae MARK ZIP 53921 H 1525 Markarian Galaxies SEYFERT ZIP 22580 H/D 121 Seyfert Galaxies SN ZIP 5417 H/D 232 Supernova remnants REDSHIFT ZIP 126902 H New redshifts for UGC galaxies SURFACE ZIP 44579 H Sur.Photomet. data for 1248 gal. OC1 ZIP 217841 N G.Lynga(Open clust)?part1 OC2 ZIP 138267 N G.Lynga(Open clust)?part2 VARIABLE ZIP 101504 D+ AAVSO variable stars UGC135 ZIP 35691 D UGC galaxies brighter than Mp 13.5 + Some docs are on disk. * Includes WSQJ article with corrections
While I have gone to great pains to check and insure the accuracy of the above catalogues, I am not responsible for completeness or correctness of any of the above data, nor can I offer any programming experience in the area of reading the data (buy a good database program!). Sorry, but nor can I supply hard copy printouts of any of the catalogues. Finally, but I this time I have no means to transfer these files to Apple computers.
Comments To:bbunge@ladyandtramp.com
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