Fourth Catalog of Interferometric Measurements of Binary Stars


William I. Hartkopf & Brian D. Mason
U.S. Naval Observatory, Washington, DC

Harold A. McAlister
Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy
Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303


(catalog files are updated whenever data are added to the database;
statistics were last updated 1 January 2012)


Notice:

The 2006.5 version of the Fourth Catalog of Interferometric Measurements of Binary Stars, containing data published through 30 June 2006, is one of five USNO double star catalogs currently being written to CD-ROM. Copies of this CD-ROM are available upon request. The Third Catalog of Interferometric Measurements of Binary Stars, containing data published through 1 January 2001, was one of four USNO double star catalogs written to CD-ROM in spring 2001. These CD-ROMs are out of stock. The Third Catalog was removed from the web in August 2007, as it had long been supplanted by the Fourth Catalog.



The following description is adapted from a paper by Hartkopf et al. (2001, AJ, 122, 3480.)

The Fourth Catalog of Interferometric Measurements of Binary Stars includes all published measures of binary and multiple star systems obtained by high-resolution techniques (speckle interferometry, photoelectric occultation timings, etc.), as well as negative examinations for duplicity. A brief summary and statistical analysis of the contents of the catalog follow.


Introduction

The Fourth Catalog of Interferometric Measurements of Binary Stars began in 1982 as an internal database at the Georgia State University Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA), tabulating binary star observations made using the technique of speckle interferometry by that group's speckle camera. The Speckle Catalog soon grew to encompass other published speckle efforts, then all published astrometric and photometric data for binary stars (and single stars observed in duplicity surveys) obtained by other high angular resolution techniques (lunar occultations, adaptive optics, eyepiece interferometry, Hipparcos, etc.) as well. This extended the catalog's baseline of observations back by nearly a century, to the efforts of Schwarzschild & Villiger (1896). Results of surveys based on various infrared speckle or imaging techniques were later added, as well, even though some of these don't really qualify as high resolution.

Two printed editions of the catalog were published in the 1980's (McAlister & Hartkopf 1984, 1988), and web versions have been available since the early 1990's (Hartkopf et al. 2001a, 2001b). After the speckle efforts at CHARA were suspended in the late 1990's (in order to devote more resources to their long-baseline interferometry project) one of the authors (WIH) transferred the catalog (still nicknamed the Speckle Catalog in honor of its origins) to the U.S. Naval Observatory, whose own speckle efforts had begun earlier in the decade.


Catalog Description

The table below summarizes the contents of the catalog as of 1 January 2012. In addition to the astrometric totals presented here, the catalog includes 78,648 observations of photometric data only. In total astrometric observations, the Fourth Speckle Catalog is about 33 times the size of the First Catalog, 14 times the size of the Second, and well over twice the size of the 2001.0 Third Catalog. Figures 1 - 3 illustrate the distribution of catalog data with time, separation, and declination, respectively. 

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      Fourth Interferometric Catalogue Statistics (as of 1 January 2012)  
    
             Number of resolved stars:                      56,874
	     Number of never-resolved stars:                22,503
             Total number of stars:                         79,377 
             Median separation                               0".92


        Breakdown of data by method:             
                                          resolved  unresolved   total

            Tycho                          40,816      1,002     41,818 
            Hipparcos                      13,881     16,798     30,679   
            USNO Speckle                   22,267      4,754     27,021                        
            CHARA Speckle                  18,568      6,479     25,047  
            Other speckle, AO, etc         20,387     10,674     31,061   
            Eyepiece interferometry         3,081        700      3,781   
            Occultation                     1,664        101      1,765   
            Multi-aperture interferometers  2,573        124      2,697   
            Hubble                          1,217        955      2,172   
            Other techniques                4,269        926      5,195
           -------------------------------------------------------------
            TOTAL                         128,723     42,513    171,236


        Of the resolved total, 2,208 are vector separations (from either
        occultations or one-dimensional IR speckle). 

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The catalog is divided into 24 one-hour right ascension bands, as follows:

00 hrs ... 01 hrs ... 02 hrs ... 03 hrs ... 04 hrs ... 05 hrs ... 06 hrs ... 07 hrs
08 hrs ... 09 hrs ... 10 hrs ... 11 hrs ... 12 hrs ... 13 hrs ... 14 hrs ... 15 hrs
16 hrs ... 17 hrs ... 18 hrs ... 19 hrs ... 20 hrs ... 21 hrs ... 22 hrs ... 23 hrs


A gzipped plain text version (~5 MB) of the entire catalog is also available: text version

Entries for each system are comprised of two parts: an identification line containing designations from various catalogs, followed by individual measures sorted in order of observation date (see the format file). Major changes with this version include coordinates to 0.01s in RA and 0".1 in DEC, improvements in the formatting of filter information to allow longer wavelengths, and the addition of technique codes. The ID line format was changed slightly in July 2007 to allow additional space for long names (e.g., 2MASS designations).

Each observation includes a reference code linked to a reference file. Similarly, systems having notes are flagged with links to a notes file. An additional change in July 2007 provided links to the Sixth Orbit Catalog for pairs with published visual or astrometric orbits.

In October 2007 we completed a merger of the notes files for the WDS with those of the Interferometric and Orbit catalogs. As a result, the notes file will include systems in addition to those in this catalog. Also, because the notes file is much larger, it has been divided into 24 smaller files for faster linking to the individual catalog measurements files.

Your comments regarding either style or substance are welcome. Please report any errors you run across in the catalog to dsl@ad.usno.navy.mil


References




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