Astronomisches Rechen-Institut Heidelberg

ARICNS

ARI Data Base for Nearby Stars



Help page for the ARICNS



How to find a star in the ARICNS ?

There are various possibilities to find a star in the ARICNS:

If you know a designation of the star, e.g. Gliese 876, you should click on the link to 'Gliese' on the ARICNS page. You get then a list with all the stars in the ARICNS which have a 'Gliese number'. If you click on the link 'Gl 876', the data for this star will be shown to you on the corresponding 'star page' of the ARICNS.

We offer a large variety of designations, as you can see on the ARICNS page: Gliese numbers; Gliese-Jahreiß numbers; Woolley numbers; numbers in the catalogues: HIPPARCOS, Fundamental Stars, Bright Stars, HD, HDE, Durchmusterungen; LHS etc.; visual binaries; constellation designations (e.g. alpha Centauri); proper names (e.g. Sirius).

If you know the position of the star, you should click on the link to 'Position (RA, Dec)' on the ARICNS page. The next page is offering you three equinoxes: 1900, 1950, and 2000. If you have chosen the equinox of the positions, you have a choice between the full list of all the ARICNS stars or lists splitted up into hours of RA (in order to reduce the length of the file transmitted to you). After having received the list of positions of the stars in the ARICNS, you should click on the link with the appropriate position, and the data for this star will be shown to you on the corresponding 'star page' of the ARICNS.



How to interpret a 'star page' of the ARICNS ?

Many of the star pages of the ARICNS consist of two parts:

The first part is based on an updated version (H. Jahreiß, 1998, unpublished) of the contents of the CNS3 (1991) , derived from ground-based measurements alone.

The second part gives the results contained in the main part of the HIPPARCOS Catalogue (ESA, 1997) , if the star has been measured by the HIPPARCOS Astrometry Satellite. The components U, V, W of the space velocity and their mean errors, based on the HIPPARCOS parallaxes and proper motions and on the radial velocity given in first part of the star page, are added.

In the present, preliminary version of the ARICNS, the data of the two parts are still not 'harmonized'. For example, the HIPPARCOS parallaxes and proper motions (if listed), and the resulting space motion (U, V, W), should usually be preferred with respect to those listed in the first part of the star page.

A detailed explanation of the contents of the star pages will follow. At present, the user may use the explanations for the CNS3 and for the HIPPARCOS Catalogue. However, many of the items given on the star pages of the ARICNS are rather 'self-explaining'.


Back to the ARICNS Page or to the Home Page of the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut


Updated: 22 August 1998

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