Hi, I do some progress with UCAC3. It is ready for testing if you are interested.
You can get small extract of the catalog ready for CdC here: http://www.ap-i.net/pub/skychart/ucac3/ To keep the files small this include only two zones (z131 and z295) so it show stars only between -25 and -24.5 and between +57 and +57.5 of declination. - ucac3-mini contain only RA,Dec,Mag,B-V. I not include the proper motion as this will save 400MB for the full catalog. It include only stars not in Tycho2 and fainter than mag. 10. So always activate Tycho2 for the same field as this catalog. - ucac3-big is the same but add the proper motion, the star name and a search index. To use the search index type 3uc131-000123 in the search box. - ucac3-full is the same as ucac3-big but it include all the stars from UCAC3, including Tycho2 and bright stars. This is to use if you want to investigate the bright limit of UCAC3. The z131 zone can be use for comparison with UCAC2. It also include M28 globular cluster to show how it work for crowded fields. The z295 include the double cluster so it is also good for that. The attached screenshot show the very center of Chi Per with DSS2 and UCAC3. I am impressed how good it is. If you have a copy of the UCAC3 DVD the Catgen project file is include in each zip file and the program (windows and linux) to use to convert the binary zone to text file is in u3conv.zip. Run the program in a console to show the syntax help. The source code is at: http://skychart.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/skychart/trunk/tools/cat/ucac3/src/ Use today snapshot skychart-3.1-1232 as I correct a few bug with Catgen. I wait for your comments before to go further. Patrick [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
