Star Catalogs within 200 LY of Earth - Needed in Table Format

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Discussion Overview

The discussion centers around the request for star catalogs containing information about stars within 200 light-years of Earth. The scope includes data requirements such as name, distance, mass, luminosity, spectral type, and coordinates, as well as the challenges in obtaining this information in a usable table format.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • One participant requests star catalogs in a table format, specifying the types of data needed.
  • Another participant argues that compiling such a catalog is nearly impossible due to the faintness of many stars and the extensive effort required to determine their distances accurately.
  • A participant mentions that there are 39 stars within 15 light-years, suggesting a rough estimate of around 100,000 stars within 200 light-years, but notes that many would be practically invisible.
  • Links to existing resources for star catalogs are provided, including a Wikipedia list and a database for searching star information.
  • There is a correction regarding a link to a star catalog database, indicating a potential error in the original post.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express differing views on the feasibility of obtaining a comprehensive star catalog within 200 light-years. While some provide resources and estimates, others emphasize the challenges and limitations involved in such an endeavor.

Contextual Notes

Participants highlight limitations related to the visibility of stars, the difficulty of measuring distances accurately, and the vast number of stars that would need to be considered.

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I am looking for star catalogs of stars within 200 lys of Earth for a project I am working on. I would like to have them as .csv, but any table format should do. I'll need such info as name, dist, mass, luminosity, spectral type, galactic coords or RA and Dec., radius. So far my attempts at google is a search overload and what I have found are not in table and cannot be copied easily.

Any help is appreciated.
 
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What you're asking for is pretty much impossible. See this list for the nearest 50:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars

A lot of those stars are magnitude 17, and one of them is magnitude 22. To give you an idea of how many stars are that dim, take a look at this photo:

http://www.distantsuns.com/screen_shot6.html

The faintest star there is only magnitude 16, two times brighter than magnitude 17 and 200 times brighter than magnitude 22. The entire chart covers a region roughly equal to the area covered by your thumb at arm's length. To find all stars within 200 light years, astronomers would have to look at every single one of those stars and determine whether its distance: an impossible task. Even photographing all those stars takes years of work, and to determine distance you'd need to take photos separated by six months to look for parallax. I don't know if any of the sky survey equipment can determine a star's position to within 20 milliarcseconds (the parallax at 200 ly), but I'll be really impressed if they can.

So, I don't think what you're asking for exists, or will exist any time soon.
 
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There are 39 stars within 15 light years of earth. That means one would expect 39 x (200/15)3 within 200 ly. That's about 100,000 stars - which is a lot. Worse, most of these stars are, as ideasrule mentions, practically invisible.
 

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