The SPM Catalog 2.0 provides positions, absolute proper motions and photographic BV photometry for over 320,000 stars and galaxies. The Catalog covers an area of ~3700 square degrees in an irregularly bounded band between declinations of -43 and -22 degrees, with a slight extension near the South Galactic Pole, but excluding fields in the plane of the Milky Way. Stars cover the magnitude range 5<V<18.5. The standard errors for the best measured stars are as follows: 20 mas for positions in each coordinate; 2mas/yr for absolute proper motions and 0.05mag for B and V magnitudes. Standard error estimates of positions, absolute proper motions and magnitudes are given for each individual object. In addition to the Catalog, a list of CCD calibrating sequences is provided. Note that all fields (and objects) contained in the 1.0 version of the Catalog are also included in this version. The values of the astrometric parameters for these objects, however, may be different due to refinements in the reduction procedure, (i.e. the SGP fields were re-reduced for inclusion in the SPM catalog 2.0).
A single table combines the revised and extended results of 24 series of photometric observations made in South Africa between 1947 and 1960 on the nine Harvard E regions at declination -45{deg}. For each of about 90 stars in each region are tabulated V and B-V on the standard U,B,V system, an ultraviolet-free blue magnitude S'Pg, a photovisual magnitude SPv and, in most cases, an ultraviolet minus blue colour (U-B)_C_. The internal standard error of an entry is +/-0.01mag or less.
The distance of the dark cloud L1251 was estimated from observations made at the Konkoly Observatory between 1985 and 1991. The spectral classification and the H{alpha} emission features were measured on objective-prism plates taken with the 60/80/180 Schmidt telescope; the photometry was derived from observations made on photographic plates with emulsion-filter combinations giving magnitudes in the Johnson photometric system. The distance of the cloud was found to be 300+/-50pc.
First Epoch astrometric and radiometric information of a survey in the optical along the Galactic fourth quadrant is archived for further analysis in the time-domain. A photographic survey of 1.9x10^6^ stars down to B-magnitude 14.5+/-0.5 along the galactic meridian l=(330+/-5){deg},-64{deg}<b<-7{deg} and along the galactic equator 272{deg}<l<341{deg},-7{deg}<b<7{deg}, is provided from century old astrographic plates of Sydney Observatory. Stellar candidates to investigate the Galaxy disk kinematics up to a distance of 1kpc from the Sun are tentatively selected. A catalogue of 4.8x10^5^ stars is provided for further investigation of the galactic disk heating by transient spiral wave or by GMC encounter.
****************************************************************** This version is a preliminary adaptation of the APM, covering the Northern sky at high galactic latitudes only. ****************************************************************** The catalogue APMCAT-POSS1-1.0 is derived from the first epoch (1949-1958) Palomar Observatory-National Geographic Sky Survey (POSS). The catalog is based on digitised scans with the laser based Cambridge Automated Plate Measurement(APM) machine of both the blue O plates and red E plates. The plates are scanned with a pixel sampling 8microns which corresponds 0.49 arcsecs at the nominal plate scale of 61arcsec/mm (16.4 micron/arcsec). Further details about the survey material can be found in Minkowski and Abell 1963 and Lund and Dixon 1973.
The Initial Gaia Source List will be the starting point for the Gaia Initial Data Treatment. The Attitude Star Catalog will be used by the first iteration of the on-ground attitude reconstruction.
The LF program was initiated at the Warner and Swasey Observatory by S.W. McCuskey for studies of the variations of the stellar luminosity function (LF) in the Milky Way. The program originally presented in a paper of July 1947 (1947ApJ...106....1M), proposes an observation of selected Milky Way regions with the 24-36-inch Schmidt telescope of the Warner and Swasey Observatory down to mpg=12.25; the observations result in spectral classification, photographic and photored magnitudes of a large number of stars. The original catalogues contain annotated charts of the studied regions, and tables with the spectral types and magnitudes. The catalog included here is a compilation of 13 publications of this program corresponding to the fields LF1 to LF9 (detailed references in the "References" section below). It was prepared by Brian Skiff (Lowell Observatory) over the period 1994-2003, and includes the original data (with the exception of the "red index" colors too noisy to be of use), with cross-identifications to modern catalogues like the GSC (I/254) that give accurate J2000 positions; he also added extensive notes.
USNO-A1.0 is a catalog of 488,006,860 sources whose positions can be used for astrometric references. These sources were detected by the Precision Measuring Machine (PMM) built and operated by the U. S. Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station during the scanning and processing of the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey I (POSS-I) O and E plates, the UK Science Research Council SRC-J survey plates, and the European Southern Observatory ESO-R survey plates. The PMM detects and processes at and beyond the nominal limiting magnitude of these surveys, but the large number of spurious detections requires that a filter be used to eliminate as many as possible. USNO-A's sole inclusion requirement was that there be spatially coincident detections (within a 2 arcsecond radius aperture) on the blue and red survey plate. For field centers of -30 degrees and above, data come from POSS-I plates, while data from field centers of -35 and below come from SRC-J and ESO-R plates.
USNO-B1.0 (Cat. I/284) and 2MASS (Cat. II/246) are the most widely used full-sky surveys. However, 2MASS has no proper motions at all, and USNO-B1.0 published only relative, not absolute (i.e. on ICRS) proper motions. We performed a new determination of mean positions and proper motions on the ICRS system by combining USNO-B1.0 and 2MASS astrometry. This catalog is called PPMXL, and it aims to be complete from the brightest stars down to about V=20 full-sky. PPMXL contains about 900 million objects, some 410 million with 2MASS photometry, and is the largest collection of ICRS proper motions at present. As representative for the ICRS we chose PPMX. The recently released UCAC3 (Cat. I/315) could not be used because we found plate-dependent distortions in its proper motion system north of -20{deg} declination. UCAC3 served as an intermediate system for {demta}<-20{deg}. The resulting typical individual mean errors of the proper motions range from 4mas/yr to more than 10mas/yr depending on observational history. The mean errors of positions at epoch 2000.0 are 80 to 120 mas, if 2MASS astrometry could be used, 150 to 300 mas else. We also give correction tables to convert USNO-B1.0 observations of e.g. minor planets to the ICRS system.
We present a determination of the thick disk iron abundance distribution obtained from an in situ sample of F/G stars. These stars are faint, 15<=V=<18, selected on the basis of color, being a subset of the larger survey of Gilmore and Wyse designed to determine the properties of the stellar populations several kiloparsecs from the Sun. The fields studied in the present paper probe the iron abundance distribution of the stellar populations of the galaxy at 500-3000pc above the plane, at the solar Galactocentric distance. The derived chemical abundance distributions are consistent with no metallicity gradients in the thick disk over this range of vertical distance, and with an iron abundance distribution for the thick disk that has a peak at -0.7dex. The lack of a vertical gradient argues against slow, dissipational settling as a mechanism for the formation of the thick disk. The photometric and metallicity data support a turn-off of the thick disk that is comparable in age to the metal-rich globular clusters, or >=12Gyr, and are consistent with a spread to older ages.
