Issue |
A&A
Volume 516, June-July 2010
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A28 | |
Number of page(s) | 24 | |
Section | Catalogs and data | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201014002 | |
Published online | 22 June 2010 |
Three editions of the star catalogue of Tycho Brahe*
Machine-readable versions and comparison with the modern Hipparcos Catalogue
1
Astronomical Institute, Utrecht University, PO Box 80 000, 3508 TA Utrecht, The Netherlands e-mail: f.w.m.verbunt@uu.nl
2
URU-Explokart, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, PO Box 80 115,
3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands
3
Institute for the History and Foundations of Science, PO Box 80 000,
3508 TA Utrecht, The Netherlands
Received:
6
January
2010
Accepted:
3
February
2010
Tycho Brahe completed his catalogue with the positions and magnitudes of 1004 fixed stars in 1598. This catalogue circulated
in manuscript form. Brahe edited a shorter version with 777 stars, printed in 1602, and Kepler edited the full catalogue of 1004 stars,
printed in 1627. We provide machine-readable versions of the three versions of the catalogue, describe the differences between them and
briefly discuss their accuracy on the basis of
comparison with modern data from the Hipparcos Catalogue. We also compare our results with earlier analyses by Dreyer
(1916, Tychonis Brahe Dani Scripta Astronomica, Vol. II) and Rawlins (1993, DIO, 3, 1), finding good overall agreement. The magnitudes
given by Brahe correlate well with modern values, his longitudes and latitudes have error distributions with widths of 2´, with
excess numbers of stars with larger errors (as compared to Gaussian distributions), in particular for the faintest stars. Errors in
positions larger than 10´, which comprise about 15% of the entries, are likely due to computing or copying errors.
Key words: astrometry / history and philosophy of astronomy
The full tables KeplerE and Variants (see Table 4) and the table with the latin descriptions of the stars are available in electronic form only at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/qcat?J/A+A/516/A28
© ESO, 2010
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.