While doing my Astronomy essay on the OWL telescope with Adaptive Optics I
got
a good article from ADS of Nature vol 403, 6 Jan 2000, "Adaptive Optics
corrections available for the whole sky", (Ragazzoni, Marchetti & Valente).
They used a natural asterism of four stars for Natural Guide Stars (an
equi-lateral triple- with ~ 22-28" sides- and a central one within) and I
thought "I wonder if I can find that on SNPro." The co-ordinates were given,
(RA 19h 29.1m DEC +2d 39') so I found three of them (the equi-lateral triple
was also mentioned in Sky & Telescope, Mar 99, p100-101, R. Sinnott "Hunting
for equi-lateral triple stars")
TYC469-6168-1 m=9.21 19h 29.13m +2d 39.35'
TYC469-5176-1 m=10.56 19h 29.1m +2d 39.25'
TYC469-4336-1 m=11.06 19h 29.11m +2d 39.65'
BUT, I can't find the fourth star in Starry Night Pro. It should be "mag =
12" so I ensured the availablity of the Hubble GSC catalog files containing
mags 11-16, and the Hipparcos/Tycho file mags 10-14. I checked the DSS
images to find what kind of completeness is evident in the Starry Night
images (not great !) and there _is_ a central star shown there. And further,
there are quite a few stars not appearing in SNPro, with image points near
to other known magnitudes.
Any takers for this small challenge, or do we have to assume a "fault" in
SNPro star catalog(sure I know it's not a "big" fault, but maybe it's worth
mentioning...)? I'd also love to know how to check the original HIP/TYC
database at ESO.org
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