The fourth U.S. Naval Observatory CCD Astrograph Catalog (UCAC4)
Short Name:
ucac4 scs
Date:
27 Dec 2024 08:31:12
Publisher:
The GAVO DC team
Description:
UCAC4 is a compiled, all-sky star catalog covering mainly the 8 to 16
magnitude range in a single bandpass between V and R.
Positional errors are about 15 to 20 mas for stars in the 10 to 14 mag
range. Proper motions have been derived for most of the about 113
million stars utilizing about 140 other star catalogs with significant
epoch difference to the UCAC CCD observations. These data are
supplemented by 2MASS photometric data for about 110 million stars and
5-band (B,V,g,r,i) photometry from the APASS (AAVSO Photometric
All-Sky Survey) for over 50 million stars. UCAC4 also contains error
estimates and various flags. All bright stars not observed with
the astrograph have been added to UCAC4 from a set of Hipparcos and
Tycho-2 stars. Thus UCAC4 should be complete from the brightest stars
to about R=16, with the source of data indicated in flags.
This catalog combines Gaia DR1, Pan-STARRS 1, SDSS and 2MASS astrometry
to compute proper motions for 350 million sources across three-fourths of
the sky down to a magnitude of mr≈20. Positions of galaxies from Pan-STARRS 1
are used to build a reference frame for PS1, SDSS, and 2MASS data.
Gaia DR1 is adapted to that reference frame by exploiting that locally,
proper motions are linear.
GPS1 has a characteristic systematic error of less than 0.3 mas/yr, and
a typical precision of 1.5−2.0 mas/yr. The proper motions have been
validated using galaxies, open clusters, distant giant stars and QSOs. In
comparison with other published faint proper motion catalogs, GPS1's
systematic error (<0.3 mas/yr) is about 10 times better than that of PPMXL
and UCAC4 (>2.0 mas/yr). Similarly, its precision (~1.5 mas/yr) is
an improvement by ∼ 4 times relative to PPMXL and UCAC4 (∼6.0 mas/yr).
For QSOs, the precision of GPS1 is found to be worse (∼2.0−3.0 mas/yr),
possibly due to their particular differential chromatic refraction (DCR).
HSOY is a catalog of 583'001'653 objects with precise astrometry based on
PPMXL and Gaia DR1. Typical formal errors at mean epoch in proper motion are
below 1 mas/yr for objects brighter than 10 mag, and about 5 mas/yr at the
faint end (about 20 mag). South of -30 degrees, astrometry is significantly
worse. HSOY also contains, where available, USNO-B, Gaia, and 2MASS
photometry. HSOY's positions and proper motions are given for epoch J2000.
The catalog becomes severely incomplete faintwards of 16 mag in the G-band.
The mean epochs are typically very close to Gaia's J2015.
HSOY still contains about 0.7% spurious close
"binaries" (non-matched stars) from the original USNO-B (marked with non-NULL
clone). Also, failed matches within Gaia DR1 contribute another 1.5% spurious
pairs (marked with non-NULL comp). In both cases, astrometry presumably is
sub-standard.
More information is available at http://dc.g-vo.org/hsoy.
PPMXL is a catalog of positions, proper motions, 2MASS- and optical
photometry of 900 million stars and galaxies, aiming to be complete
down to about V=20 full-sky. It is the result
of a re-reduction of USNO-B1 together with 2MASS to the ICRS as
represented by PPMX. This service additionally provides improved proper
motions computed according to Vickers et al, 2016
(:bibcode:`2016AJ....151...99V`).