readfk5

Read Fifth Fundamental Catalog of Stars

readfk5 will be removed in a future release.

Syntax

struc = readfk5(filename)
struc = readfk5(filename,struc)


Description

struc = readfk5(filename) reads the FK5 file and returns the contents in a structure. Each star is an element in the structure, with the different data items stored in appropriately named fields.

struc = readfk5(filename,struc) appends the data in the file to the existing structure struc.

Background

The Fifth Fundamental Catalog of Stars (FK5), Parts I and II, is a compilation of data on more than 4500 stars. The catalog contains positions, errors in positions, proper motions, and characteristics such as magnitudes, spectral types, parallaxes, and radial velocities. There are also cross-references to the identities of stars in other catalogs. It was compiled by researchers at the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut in Heidelberg.

Examples

FK5 = readfk5('FK5.dat');
FK5e = readfk5('FK5_ext.dat');
whos

  Name       Size         Bytes  Class
  FK5        1x1535     5042752  struct array
  FK5e       1x3117    10226424  struct array
FK5e(1)

ans = 
         FK5: 2003
         RAh: 0
         RAm: 5
         RAs: 1.1940
        pmRA: 0.6230
         DEd: 27
         DEm: 40
         DEs: 29.0100
        pmDE: -1.1100
     RAh1950: 0
     RAm1950: 2
     RAs1950: 26.5900
    pmRA1950: 0.6210
     DEd1950: 27
     DEm1950: 23
     DEs1950: 47.4400
    pmDE1950: -1.1100
    EpRA1900: 51.7200
       e_RAs: 2
      e_pmRA: 9
    EpDE1900: 46.8200
       e_DEs: 3.4000
      e_pmDE: 14
        Vmag: 6.4700
      n_Vmag: ''
      SpType: 'G5'
         plx: []
          RV: 12
       AGK3R: '38'
         SRS: ''
          HD: '225292'
          DM: 'BD+26 4744'
          GC: '48'

Tips

Positions are given in terms of right ascension and declination. The Fifth Fundamental Catalog of Stars (FK5), Parts I and II data and documentation are available over the Internet by anonymous ftp.