NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Brad Morris
Date: 2010 Mar 18, 14:21 -0400
I wrote to Celestron regarding the difference between the USNO Bright Stars Catalog and the RA and Dec provided by the Skyscout.
Their answer is below. I thought it relevant to include this for future users of the list, when investigating this product.
Best Regards
Brad
From: Celestron Support [mailto:mail@celestronsupport.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2010 2:15 PM
To: Brad Morris
Subject: [#BLG-835749]: Right Ascension and Declination
SkyScout uses Hipparcos data and doesn't correct for precession to epoch of the moment.
Clear skies,
Celestron Technical Support
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Brad Morris (bmorris@tactronics.com) Posted on: Mar 17 2010 06:27 AM
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Hi Celestron
The product is great and works as advertised. I do have a small technical question which you may be able to answer.
When accessing the RA and Dec for an object, the data does not agree with the Bright Stars catalog maintained by the United States Naval Observatory. That is, I can see differences by as much as 2 minutes 33 seconds in RA (34 beta Aur) and as much as 2 minutes
36.2 seconds in Dec (14 o Leo), just from my small sample size. Needless to say, this is not an exhaustive walk of the Skyscout database. However, I have yet to find a single object which precisely agrees. The smallest error has been 22 seconds in RA and 10
seconds in Dec (different objects)
1) Would an update of the Skyscout software also update the object database, in particular for the RA and Dec?
2) Since there is proper motion in the stars, this would be a yearly update, yes?
Please don't call the phone number provided. I do not wish to receive phone calls. Further, it is obviously a fake phone number :-)
Best Regards
Brad Morris
Email Details
Email ID: BLG-835749
Department: Technical Support
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed
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