Display in Guide of USNO-B1.0 stars downloaded from VizieR

John Greaves has sent in the file and information needed to get Guide 8 to show USNO B1.0 data downloaded from VizieR. You can also show B1.0 data as downloaded from NOFS; the resulting data shown will not be particularly different.

You can click here to download the .TDF file needed to display VizieR B1.0 data. Save it in your Guide directory. Here are John's instructions as to how to get data for the .TDF to read:

i) ensure java script is enabled in browser

ii) urlificate thuswards :-

http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=USNO-B1.0

     ----now, going down this webpage page----

iii) QUERY SETUP section : make Max Entries per table 9999

iv) QUERY SETUP section : make Output Layout ASCII TABLE

IMPORTANT:- ASCII TABLE is the top option and must be the one
selected!!!

iv) Query by Position on the Sky section : enter your position in the
format hh mm ss +dd '' "", eg 01 23 45 -67 89 10 , this is the format
vizier expects, and the sign is important, even for positive
declinations.

v) Query by Position on the Sky section : Target dimension.
IMPORTANT: data gets big real quick, and the density of these objects
is so great that Guide really needs to be zoomed in very much to make
things out, so a few arcminutes will probably suffice.

vi)  Scroll all the way to the bottom of the screen and click on the
button marked 'ALL' (the one immediately above the button marked
'none').

vii) Scroll all the way to the bottom of the screen and click the
lefthandmost tick box that says 'ALL cols'

viii) Tick 'Submit Query' button to right of screen

ix) GoTo File Save As and make sure _file type_ is text, or ascii.
This latter is browser dependent, and users will have to experiment
for themselves.  Use any filename wished.

x_a) data will eventually have to be stored in a file called
usnobviz.dat to be kept in the Guide directory.  New data can be
appended to old using a text editor or similar, but it must be a raw
text/ascii editor, to ensure that no wordwrapping occurs and that no
document formatting codes are accidentally inserted.

x_b) file can be renamed to usnobviz.dat and saved to the Guide
directory.  In this case the file is always new, and old data is
lost, being replaced by the new.

xi) Go To the relevant RA and Dec and, using the TDF at bottom of
this mail, the data will display as white circles with help and more
info options.  TDF is minimalistic, full explanation of USNO B1.0
fields lives here http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/Cat?I/284 .  The
data fields are mostly obtuse anyway.  Cut and paste the appended TDF
script into a text editor and save it as whatevernameyoulike.tdf in
the Guide directory as an ascii file.

INCIDENTALLY: when I first did this, when vizier download first
became available about a month ago, I tested the TDF to find it
worked fine.

I returned to using this route a week ago to find that the tdf no
longer worked.  VizieR had added four characters to its own default
setup.  Adding 4 to all the TDF start column entries in the TDF seems
to have worked, but rigorous testing has not been possible as yet.

However, it should mostly work as is, unless they change the default
format yet again.  This shouldn't happen now, though.

Incidentally, the use of blanks for certain entries in the vizier
output, when there is no data, may occasionally cause problems.  ie
Guide crashes with a general protection error.  This is very rare,
but it has happened to me once.  Only on More Info though.