Optical Reference Star Catalogs for Space Surveillance: Current Status and Future Plans

Abstract

The current status of existing star catalogs of relevance for Space Surveillance applications will be reviewed. Hipparcos and Tycho 2 provided reference stars with milliarcsecond (mas) accuracies at their epoch of 1991.25. During the 16 years since then, the proper motion uncertainties have reduced the accuracies significantly. Ground-based programs such as the USNO CCD Astrograph Catalog (UCAC) will soon provide an all-sky, astrometrically accurate (20-70 mas) reference star catalog to 16th magnitude. The USNO-B astrometric catalog contains over a billion detections, providing astrometric positons (~200 mas) and photometry for stars down to V=21 magnitude. These catalogs and others are incorporated into the Naval Observatory Merged Astrometric Dataset (NOMAD); a 100 GB dataset containing astrometric and photometric data for about 1.1 billion stars.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2007
Accession Number
ADA480347

Entities

People

  • B. Dorland
  • K. Johnston
  • Norbert Zacharias
  • P. K. Seidelmann
  • R. Gaume

Organizations

  • United States Naval Observatory

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Accuracy
  • Catalogs
  • Ground Based
  • Information Operations
  • Observation
  • Observatories
  • Precession
  • Precision
  • Space Surveillance
  • Standards
  • Surveillance

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Astronomy/Astrophysics
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • Space
  • Space - Space Objects