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Description
The XZ catalog was created at the U.S. Naval Observatory in 1977 by Richard Schmidt and Tom Van Flandern, primarily for the purpose of generating predictions of lunar occultations, and for analyzing timings of these events. It was designed to include all stars from Robertson's Zodiacal Catalog (ZC), the SAO catalog, and the AGK3 catalog that are within 6d 40' of the ecliptic (a region hereafter called "the Zodiac"), which is as far as the Moon's limb can ever get as seen from anywhere on the Earth's surface, leaving some margin for stellar proper motions and change in the obliquity of the ecliptic over the course of three centuries. The original version contained 32,221 entries. Since that time, a number of changes have been made in succeeding versions, including better positions and proper motions, and the elimination and addition of stars. The catalog contains visual magnitudes and radial velocities as well as astrometric data. Two years after the catalog was created, and observations were already reported using its numbers, it was found that about 200 stars near the equator from the AGK3 catalog were outside the Zodiac, and a similar number that should have been included were not. Since the numbering system had already been established, the catalog was not changed to correct this deficiency. Over the years, some errors in the catalog, due mainly to errors in the SAO and AGK3, were corrected. A few stars with very bad data were "eliminated" by changing their declination to -89d and adding 40 to their magnitudes. In 1986, most of the stellar positional data were replaced with improved data from Harrington's and Douglass' Zodical Zone (ZZ) catalog, which used for its observing list SAO stars in the Zodiac (actually broader than the XZ Zodiac because ecliptic latitudes to +/-15d were used) north of declination approximately -25d. The positional data for many of the stars south of declination -25d with right ascensions greater than 18h were improved with data from the Lick Voyager Uranus catalog. In 1991, the photographic magnitudes of the AGK3 stars not in the SAO were converted to photovisual magnitudes by applying corrections based on each star's spectral type, when available. Stellar magnitudes and double-star codes have been updated periodically based on reports from observers. Each time a series of updates was made, the XZ version was changed. The current version is XZ80N, created during the summer of 1992. Late in the summer of 1992, Mitsuru Soma in Japan created a J2000 version of the XZ, which we call XZ80NJ2. The next update is planned for 1994, when the positional data may also be replaced with PPM data; probably only the J2000 version will be updated. The XZ catalog is no longer maintained at the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO); it is now maintained by the International Occultation Timing Association (IOTA). The changes made to the different versions of the XZ catalog during the past several years have been documented in Occultation Newsletter, IOTA's quarterly publication.
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