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Description
The Hipparcos and Tycho Catalogues are the primary products of the European Space Agency's astrometric mission, Hipparcos. The satellite, which operated for four years, returned high quality scientific data from November 1989 to March 1993. Each of the catalogues contains a large quantity of very high quality astrometric and photometric data. In addition there are associated annexes featuring variability and double/multiple star data, and solar system astrometric and photometric measurements. In the case of the Hipparcos Catalogue, the principal parts are provided in both printed and machine-readable form (on CDROM). In the case of the Tycho Catalogue, results are provided in machine-readable form only (on CDROM). Although in general only the final reduced and calibrated astrometric and photometric data are provided, some auxiliary files containing results from intermediate stages of the data processing, of relevance for the more-specialised user, have also been retained for publication. (Some, but not all, data files are available from the Centre de Donnees astronomiques de Strasbourg.) The global data analysis tasks, proceeding from nearly 1000 Gbit of raw satellite data to the final catalogues, was a lengthy and complex process, and was undertaken by the NDAC and FAST Consortia, together responsible for the production of the Hipparcos Catalogue, and the Tycho Consortium, responsible for the production of the Tycho Catalogue. A fourth scientific consortium, the INCA Consortium, was responsible for the construction of the Hipparcos observing programme, compiling the best-available data for the selected stars before launch into the Hipparcos Input Catalogue. The production of the Hipparcos and Tycho Catalogues marks the formal end of the involvement in the mission by the European Space Agency and the four scientific consortia. For much more information about this catalog, such as fuller descriptions of the parameters, the user is urged to check the Hipparcos and Tycho Catalogs website at <a href="https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/hipparcos/catalogues">https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/hipparcos/catalogues</a>. This database table was created by the HEASARC in April 2000 based on <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/I/239">CDS Catalog I/239</a> file hip_main.dat.gz, the Hipparcos Main Catalog. It was updated in October 2002 to fix some entries which were missing coordinates. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .
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