XEphem Catalogs

The star catalogs in this repository are for the XEphem serious interactive astronomical software ephemeris.

Official

• GSC2201/ — The 1.3 GB Hubble Guide Star Catalog 2.2.0.1 which includes stars in the magnitude range 10.0–18.5. Though traditionally installed at /usr/local/xephem/catalogs/GSC2201, you can install the catalog anywhere as long as you enter its path in the “GSC 2.2 Directory” field in XEphem’s “Field Stars” window. See the Reference Manual’s Field Stars section for more details.

• Official/ — Large collection of catalogs (weighing a total 328 MB) that, in the old days, shipped with XEphem on its installation media. Most of the catalogs are in the .edb text format, though two are in the binary .xe2 format.

User contributed

Three catalogs have been contributed by Steve Mencinsky:

• M31globulars.edb — a list of principle globular clusters in galaxy M31.

• SMC.edb — a list of deep sky objects in the Magellanic Clouds.

• recons100.edb — is the complete census as of January 1, 2000, of objects outside our solar system known within 10 parsecs. Updated (and syntax errors removed) by Richard Mathar to the status of Jan. 1 2012.

Three updates contributed by Richard Mathar:

• AstLowell.edb is an update of the old variant of the Lowell asteroids of the Official directory to Jan 2024.

• AstMPD.edb is an update of the old variant of the MPC asteroids to Jan 2024.

• xephem_sites3 is the MPC list of observatory codes as of Feb 2024.