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Astrometry References and Notes
Books and Articles
The Handbook of Astronomical Image Processing by Berry and Burnell provides a good introduction to astrometry (Chapter 7).
Star Catalogs for the 21st Century by Adrian R. Ashford, Sky and Telescope, July 2001, page 65. This is a useful introduction to star catalogues.
Modern Astrometry by Jean Kovalevsky is a good general introduction to practical astrometry.
The Astrographic Catalogue by S.E.Urban & T.E.Corbin, Sky & Telescope, June 1998, p41.
Astronomy on the Personal Computer by O. Montenbruck and T. Pfleger has a chapter on astrometry.
Web
Herbert Raab's paper on "Detecting and Measuring faint Point Sources with a CCD".
Minor Planet Center's Guide to Minor Body Astrometry
Our ex-Level-1 computer-based experiment focuses on The Motion of the Barnard's Star. Copy of the images required are available on the AstroLab file server at //astrotmp/barnard/.
Software
The recommended source of reference stars is the Fourth US Naval Observatory CCD Astrograph Catalog (UCAC4). Note this is not a complete catalogue of ALL stars. The UCAC4 catalog can be queried at Vizier and a local copy is available on the Astrolab File Server (Canopus).
By reference to the UCAC4 star catalog astrometry measurements can be made with uncertainties of better than 0.1 arcsec (see figure below).
Starlink's SLA library contains much useful information on positional astronomy. The section on Explanation and Examples is well worth looking at. Useful background information can also be found in the User Notes for their basic astrometry program Astrom package.
SAO's wcstools
Andrew Pickles' Ascfit
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2020-Jun-17 13:49:03 UTC |