StarPlot: Star Data

Download data sets for StarPlot here. These are easy to install; just unzip and untar the file, cd to the resulting directory, and follow the directions in the INSTALL file. Read the COPYING file included with each data set for copyright information before doing so.

The version number of each data set corresponds to the version number of StarPlot at the last time the data set was edited. Note that data sets are not guaranteed to be backwards-compatible with older versions of StarPlot. For instance, the version of the Gliese data set for StarPlot 0.93 should work with version 0.95 of StarPlot, but the reverse may not be true.

The following two data sets are probably sufficient for most people.

The following catalog contains data from the Hipparcos mission, and therefore generally has more accurate star positions than the above two. However, it is also huge and will make StarPlot rather slow. You have been warned.

User contributed catalogs for StarPlot:

Another good source of stellar data files is the Strasbourg Astronomical Data Center (CDS): http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/CDS.html. You will have to write a specification file in order to use the starconvert utility to put these files into StarPlot's data file format. See the file data/example.spec in the StarPlot source tree, or any of the *.spec files in the data packages above, for examples.

A Note on Copyright

Unlike the StarPlot source code, these data files are not all licensed under the GNU GPL. Therefore the StarPlot-readable data files which the starconvert program generates from the original data files may not be freely distributed. Please read the COPYING file included with each data set for more information.

Copyright © 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 Kevin B. McCarty.

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