Description of flat ASCII version of TASS tenxcat catalog

Michael Richmond
Oct 14, 1999

For more information on the TASS Mark III project, see the TASS home page at http://stupendous.rit.edu/tass/tass.shtml

For more information on the tenxcat catalog, see TASS Technical Note 56 at http://stupendous.rit.edu/tass/technotes/tn0056.html

The flat ASCII version of tenxcat should contain

• 367,241 lines
• 51,717,217 characters

     0001-00381   0.0009   1.0889  9.127  0.051  15  8.823  0.014   4  8.564  0.036  28 0 0 0 0 0 0                                         

235959.7-000355 359.9990  -0.0654 10.363  0.034  17  9.700  0.053   5  9.008  0.025  38 0 0 0 0 0 0                                         

The gzip'd version of the file should have 9,918,700 characters.

Description of each field in the flat ASCII version of tenxcat

Fld#	Field name	Type	Description
1	name	string A15	Usually the ID of the star in the GSC version 1.1: 0323-00222 or, if there is no matching GSC star, a name in the spirit of the proper IAU designation which looks like this: HHMMSS.s+DDMMSS In order to make this last name into a real IAU designation, one must add the prefix "TASS J"; for example, TASS J023553.2-020325
2	ra	float F8.4	The Right Ascension in decimal degrees, equinox J2000. This value is an unweighted average of the positions in all detections of the star.
3	dec	float F8.4	The Declination in decimal degrees, equinox J2000. This value is an unweighted average of the positions in all detections of the star.
4	vmag	float F6.3	The V-band magnitude. This value is an unweighted average of the measurements in all detections of the star. A blank value means no data.
5	vsig	float F6.3	The standard deviation from the mean V-band magnitude. A blank value means no data (or only a single V measurement).
6	nv	int I3	The number of detections in V-band.
7	rmag	float F6.3	The R-band magnitude. This value is an unweighted average of the measurements in all detections of the star. A value of 30.000 means no data.
8	rsig	float F6.3	The standard deviation from the mean R-band magnitude. A blank value means no data (or only a single R measurement).
9	nr	int I3	The number of detections in R-band.
10	imag	float F6.3	The I-band magnitude. This value is an unweighted average of the measurements in all detections of the star. A blank value means no data.
11	isig	float F6.3	The standard deviation from the mean I-band magnitude. A blank value means no data (or a single I-band measurement).
12	ni	int I3	The number of detections in I-band.
13	flags	6 ints 6 * I1	This field contains six values, each a single digit, either "1" or "0". See a detailed explanation below.
14	ac2000_id	int I7	The ID of the matching star in the Astrographic Catalogue 2000, which is being constructed by the US Naval Observatory. Actually, this ID was taken from the ACT catalog, a prequel to the AC2000. If there is no matching ACT star, the field is NULL.
15	hd_id	int I6	The ID of the matching star in the Henry Draper Catalogue. Actually, this ID was taken from the ACT catalog. If there is no matching HD star, the field is NULL.
16	spectype	string A4	The spectral type of the star, from the Henry Draper Catalogue. If there is no matching HD star, this field is NULL.
17	iras_id	string A12	The name of a matching source in the IRAS Point Source Catalogue. If there is no matching IRAS source, this field is NULL.

Here is a detailed description of the flags encoded in field 13 of the user-friendly format. The field contains six single-digit values, in which each digit is either '0' or '1'.

• The first digit shows raw_flag:
  • '0' means that the magnitudes were corrected for color terms;
  • '1' means that they were not corrected, usually because a (V-I) color could not be determined.
• The second digit shows flag2:
  • '1' means that it was a member of a spurious pair (see below), but has been merged together with its spurious companion.
  • '0' means that the star was not part of a spurious pair which was merged.
• The third digit shows flag3:
  • '1' means that it was a member of a spurious pair, and was unable to be merged together with its spurious companion. In this case, another entry will exist in tenxcat for the spurious companion.
  • '0' means that the star is not part of spurious pair which could not be merged.
• The fourth digit is currently unused, and should always be '0'.
• The fifth digit is currently unused, and should always be '0'.
• The sixth digit is currently unused, and should always be '0'.

Some examples:

• 0 0 0 0 0 0 The star's magnitudes have been corrected for color terms. It was not a member of a spurious pair.
• 1 0 0 0 0 0 The star's magnitude have not been corrected for color terms. It was not a member of a spurious pair.
• 0 1 0 0 0 0 The star's magnitudes have been corrected for color terms. The star was a member of a spurious pair, but the two entries have been merged. All data on the two members appears combined in this entry.
• 1 0 1 0 0 0 The star's magnitudes have not been corrected for color terms. The star was a member of a spurious pair, and it was impossible to merge them. An entry for the other member of this spurious pair will appear elsewhere in tenxcat. It, too, will have a value of '1' in the final character of this flag field.