NGC 2419 is a peculiar Galactic globular cluster offset from the others in the size-luminosity diagram, and showing several chemical abundance anomalies. Here, we present Stromgren uvby photometry of the cluster. Using the gravity- and metallicity-sensitive c1 and m1 indices, we identify a sample of likely cluster members extending well beyond the formal tidal radius. The estimated contamination by cluster non-members is only one per cent, making our catalogue ideally suited for spectroscopic follow-up. We derive photometric [Fe/H] of red giants, and depending on which metallicity calibration from the literature we use, we find reasonable to excellent agreement with spectroscopic [Fe/H], both for the cluster mean metallicity and for individual stars. We demonstrate explicitly that the photometric uncertainties are not Gaussian and this must be accounted for in any analysis of the metallicity distribution function.
New astrometric reductions of the US Naval Observatory CCD Astrograph Catalog (UCAC) all-sky observations were performed from first principles using the TGAS stars in the 8 to 11 magnitude range as reference star catalog. Significant improvements in the astrometric solutions were obtained and the UCAC5 catalog of mean positions at a mean epoch near 2001 was generated. By combining UCAC5 with Gaia DR1 data new proper motions on the Gaia coordinate system for over 107 million stars were obtained with typical accuracies of 1 to 2mas/yr (R=11 to 15mag), and about 5mas/yr at 16th mag. Proper motions of most TGAS stars are improved over their Gaia data and the precision level of TGAS proper motions is extended to many millions more, fainter stars. External comparisons were made using stellar cluster fields and extragalactic sources. The TGAS data allow us to derive the limiting precision of the UCAC x, y data, which is significantly better than 1/100 pixel.
The UCAC2 is the second release of the ongoing UCAC project, designed to observe the entire sky for R magnitudes of about 7.5 to 16. The observed positional errors are about 20 mas for the stars in the 10-14 magnitude range, and about 70 mas at the limiting magnitude of R~16. For up-to-date information on the project, see the UCAC web page at http://ad.usno.navy.mil/ucac/ . This web page will also serve as the location that the UCAC team will post addenda to the UCAC2 catalog. The UCAC2 is a high density, highly accurate, astrometric catalog of 48,330,571 stars covering the sky from -90 to +40 degrees in declination and going up to +52 degrees in some areas. The northern limit is a function of right ascension. Proper motions and photometry are provided for all stars. Positions and proper motions are on the ICRS (International Celestial Reference System) and given at the epoch J2000.0. The UCAC2 has a number of major differences with respect to UCAC1. These differences include: - much larger sky coverage - reduced systematic errors of CCD observations - positions given at a standard epoch (J2000.0) - the addition of several new catalogs for improved proper motions - photometry in the J, H, and K_s bands from the 2MASS project Additional details of the data are found in Sections 3, 4, and 5 of the "readme.txt" file. UCAC2 is the last intermediate data release before the final, all sky catalog will be constructed. Observations will end around mid 2004; the final catalog is expected out in 2005. The UCAC project, observations, and first data release are described in detail in the paper Zacharias et al. AJ 120, 2131 (2000). Versions of that and other related papers are placed on the UCAC Web page (http://ad.usno.navy.mil/ucac/). The paper describing UCAC2 is in preparation (AJ, 2003); some further details can be found in the "readme.txt" file.
The UCAC1 is a high density, highly accurate, astrometric catalog of over 27 million stars in the Southern Hemisphere in the magnitude range of about 8 to 16. This version is the first release of an ongoing project to observe the entire sky; for up-to-date information see the Web page at http://ad.usno.navy.mil/ad/ucac/ . The UCAC1 is a preliminary catalog. By avoiding all "problem cases" (see details in the "intro.txt" file) it is not complete. Positions, proper motions and errors are provided, together with approximate magnitudes in the 579-642nm range. The positional precision is about 20 mas for 9 to 14 mag and 70 mas at 16th mag. The errors of the proper motions are very heterogeneous, ranging from 1 to 35 mas/yr. The UCAC is an observational program using the U.S. Naval Observatory Twin Astrograph and a 4kx4k CCD camera, covering just over 1 square degree per frame with a scale of 0.9"/pixel. Observations started in January 1998 at Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory (CTIO) and are continuing. This first catalog contains data observed through 07 November 1999 at which time about 80% of the Southern Hemisphere was completed. Full sky coverage is expected by early 2003 after a re-location of the instrument to the Northern Hemisphere planned for early 2001. The UCAC1 is also available on CD-ROM from the US Naval Observatory. Direct request to nz@pisces.usno.navy.mil with UCAC1 in the subject string.
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. UCAC4 also provides a link to the original Hipparcos star number with additional data such as parallax found on a separate data file included in this release. The proper motions of bright stars are based on about 140 catalogs, including Hipparcos and Tycho, as well as all catalogs used for the Tycho-2 proper motion construction. Proper motions of faint stars are based on re-reductions of early epoch SPM data (-90 to about -20 deg Dec) and NPM (PMM scans of early epoch blue plates) for the remainder of the sky. These early epoch SPM data have also been combined with late epoch SPM data to arrive at proper motions partly independent from UCAC4 (Girard et al. 2011AJ....142...15G, Cat. I/320). The NPM data used in UCAC4 are not published. No Schmidt plate data are used in UCAC4. The unpublished plate measure data obtained by StarScan from the AGK2, the Hamburg Zone Astrograph, the USNO Black Birch Astrograph, and the Lick Astrograph have contributed to considerable improvement in proper motions for stars mainly in the 10 to 14 mag range (down to the UCAC limit for Lick data); however, these data do not cover all sky. Recources permitting, USNO plans to release the individual CCD observations (RA,Dec at epoch of each CCD observations) in the future. Please contact nz@usno.navy.mil if you are interested in obtaining this set of about 50 GB data. We will likely request that interested users provide an external disk drive for the data release.
UCAC3 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. It is supplemented by proper motions and SuperCosmos and 2MASS photometric data, as well as various flags. The proper motions of bright stars are based on about 140 catalogs, including Hipparcos and Tycho, as well as all catalogs used for the Tycho-2 proper motion construction. Proper motions of faint stars are based on a re-reduction of early epoch SPM data (-90 to -10 deg Dec) plus Schmidt plate data from the SuperCosmos project (down weighted due to systematic errors of order 100 mas). The proper motions of faint stars (R >= 13.5) therefore should be used with caution. The unpublished plate measure data from the AGK2, the Hamburg Zone Astrograph, the USNO Black Birch Astrograph, and the Lick Astrograph have considerably contributed to improve proper motions for stars mainly in the 10 to 14 mag range (down to the UCAC3 limit for Lick data); however, these data do not cover all sky. UCAC3 features a number of major differences with respect to UCAC2: - complete sky coverage - re-reduction of the pixel data with better modeling - double stars are resolved to the limit of the data - significantly improved photometry from CCD data - slightly deeper limiting magnitude with larger number of stars/area - reduced systematic errors of CCD observations - the addition of several new catalogs for improved proper motions - photometry in the B, R, and I bands from the SuperCosmos project - minor planet observations have been sorted out - identification of more high proper motion stars - match with 2MASS extended sources and LEDA galaxies Additional details will be published in the upcoming release paper (Zacharias et al. 2009) and in several technical papers describing details of the reduction procedures and results. For the latest updates see http://www.usno.navy.mil/usno/astrometry . Requests for the data DVD should be sent to ucac3@usno.navy.mil; technical questions can be addressed to nz@usno.navy.mil .
We use data from the U.S. Naval Observatory fourth CCD Astrograph Catalog (UCAC4) in combination with photometry from the AAVSO Photometric All-Sky Survey and Two Micron All-Sky Survey to identify stars within 25pc of the Sun. A sample of nearby stars with accurate trigonometric parallaxes from the Research Consortium On Nearby Stars is used to generate a set of 16 new photometric color-M_K_ relations that provide distance estimates with uncertainties of 15%. This work expands the available suites of well-calibrated photometric distance relations that can be used to identify nearby stellar systems. The distance relations are used with quality cuts to extract an initial sample of stars from the UCAC4 estimated to be within 25pc. Color, proper motion, and existing literature sources are then used to obtain a clean sample of red dwarfs, while limiting the amount of contamination from background giants, resulting in a sample of 1761 candidate nearby stars within 25pc. Of these, 339 are new discoveries with no previously known published parallax or distance estimate, primarily with proper motions less than 0.2arcsec/yr. Five stars are estimated to be within 10pc, with the nearest, TYC 3980 1081 1, with V=10.50 estimated to be at 5.9pc. That several hundred new stars have been revealed so close to the Sun illustrates once again that there is considerable work yet to be done to map the solar neighborhood and that additional nearby stars are likely still to be discovered.
The UCAC3 all-sky CCD astrograph catalogue, minus the fields from
2MASS and SuperCosmos and matching/object flags (which can be
recovered with a local crossmatch).
We present mean proper motions and membership probabilities of individual stars for optically visible open clusters, which have been determined using data from the UCAC5 catalogue. This follows our previous studies with the UCAC2 and UCAC4 catalogues, but now using improved proper motions in the GAIA reference frame. In the present study results were obtained for a sample of 1108 open clusters. For five clusters, this is the first determination of mean proper motion, and for the whole sample, we present results with a much larger number of identified astrometric member stars than on previous studies. It is the last update of our Open cluster Catalogue based on proper motion data only. Future updates will count on astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic GAIA data as input for analyses.
This paper presents 442 new proper motion stellar systems in the southern sky between declinations -90{deg} and -47{deg} with 0.40"/yr>{mu}>=0.18"/yr. These systems constitute a 25.3% increase in new systems for the same region of the sky covered by previous SuperCOSMOS RECONS (SCR) searches that used Schmidt plates as the primary source of discovery. Among the new systems are 25 multiples, plus an additional 7 new common proper motion (CPM) companions to previously known primaries. All stars have been discovered using the third U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO) CCD Astrograph Catalog (UCAC3). A comparison of the UCAC3 proper motions to those from the Hipparcos, Tycho-2, Southern Proper Motion (SPM4), and SuperCOSMOS efforts is presented and shows that UCAC3 provides similar values and precision to the first three surveys.
