Plate.Catalog Property

 Plate.Catalog  (read-write, CatalogType)
 
The reference star catalog to use (CatalogType)

Syntax

Plate.Catalog [= CatalogType]

The property syntax has these parts:

Part Description
Value (CatalogType) The reference star catalog to use (CatalogType)

Remarks

The default value for this is ppGSC_ACT (=3). Use of this catalog results in excellent plate solving with modest disk space requirements (330 MB). Unless you have reasons to do otherwise (narrow field of view), we recommend using this catalog. For plate solving with a narrow field of view, you should use the USNO UCAC4 (*.5 GB) or the USNO A2.0 catalog (6 GB). The A2.0 catalog has no proper motions, however, so it is not recommended for astrometry.

For more info on catalog usage and locations where the supported catalogs can be found on the internet, see the PinPoint Knowledge Base article Downloading and Using Reference Catalogs.

In some languages, these values are available as symbolic constants as shown in the table below.

Symbolic Constants

The (symbolic) values for CatalogType are:

Constant Value Description
ppGSCACT 3 The Guide Star 1.1 catalog, adjusted within PinPoint by corrections from the ACT catalog, as implemented by Bill Gray of Project Pluto.
ppGuideStar 0 (not recommended) The Guide Star Catalog V1.1 (uncorrected)
ppNone -1 Not a catalog star
ppTycho2 4 The ESA Tycho-2 catalog
ppUCAC2 6 The USNO UCAC2 catalog (obsolete, use UCAC3)
ppUSNO_A 5 The USNO A2.0 catalog (6 GB local hard drive)
ppUSNO_SA 1 (not recommended) The USNO SA2.0 catalog
ppUSNO_B 7 The USNO B1.0 catalog (80+ GB local hard drive)
ppUSNO_B_NET 8 The USNO B1.0 catalog (internet access)
ppNOMAD_NET 9 The USNO NOMAD catalog (internet access)
ppUCAC3 10 The USNO UCAC3 catalog
ppUCAC4 11 The USNO UCAC4 catalog