UVOT Bright Star Catalog: Merged Astronomical Objects Brighter Than 12.0 Magnitude

NASA HEASARC provides a processed catalog of 239,853 astronomical objects brighter than 12.0 magnitudes. The catalog was compiled in July 2008 from four source catalogs, preprocessed for uniform units, merged, and corrected for coordinate epoch 2000.0 and missing decimal points.

Use Cases

• Identify and locate bright celestial objects based on processed Right Ascension coordinates.
• Cross-reference star data by merging information from the Tycho-2, GVCS III, NGC, and Yale Bright Star catalogs.
• Filter astronomical observations by brightness threshold using the 12.0 magnitude limit.
• Study stellar distributions using coordinates precessed to a standard epoch (2000.0).

Strengths

• Contains 239,853 objects, providing a substantial sample of bright stars.
• Integrates data from four established astronomical catalogs (Tycho-2, GVCS III, NGC, Yale Bright Star Catalog).
• Coordinates are precessed to a uniform epoch (2000.0) for temporal consistency.
• Data was corrected for issues like missing decimal points during compilation.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is known, but the specific features and data types per column are unknown.
• Last updated 2026-03-13 18:54:52.373984; freshness should be verified for current research.

Provenance

Source

NASA HEASARC, based on an input table from the Swift Project compiled by Elizabeth Auden at MSSL.

Collection Method

Merged and preprocessed from four source catalogs to achieve uniform columns and units, with objects sorted by Right Ascension.

Time Range

Coordinates precessed to epoch 2000.0.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03 13.

Geography

Celestial (sky) coverage.