The International Variable Star IndeX has been launched, allowing
access to details from many hard to find or not readily seen variable
star catalogues.

http://www.aavso.org/vsx

It supports HTTP GET, so Guide can access this database from links in
More Info

As many of the lesser known catalogues have obscure identifiers, or
are not even listed in many services, even CDS, a cone search is used
of default size one arcminutes radius (this can be made larger by
editing &size=1 to a _ sensible_ larger value in the two url lines for
VSX, ten would be an upper limit).

As the USNO B1.0 is the most sky complete star catalogue available to
Guide via the internet, this is the procedure:-

Use the USNO B1.0 from internet menu or button method in the normal
way in a small field around the star of interest, and either take More
Info for that star or use the nearest USNO B1.0 star for any new
object in the field.

A one arcmin search around that object's position is then launched in
VSX to see if that object exists, and if so, the details. Multiple
objects may be returned, click on those and you get a detail sheet.
Depending on the search radius these may, or may not, all be the same
object, remember catalogues vary widely in astrometric accuracy, which
is a problem in crowded fields. The results are sorted by distance
from the input object's source coordinates.

If only one object exists only the detail sheet for that object will
be given. If no object, a null result will be indicated.

Cut and paste the following in a text editor and save it as B10.tdf.
If you are already using the inbuilt Guide B1.0 TDF, turn that off and
turn this one on in the Toggle User Dataset dialogue, it's called USNO
B1.0 + coz of the hyper links and a lack of imagination on my part.
It expects data downloaded from USNO B1.0 to be in the file b10.dat,
if your version of Guide saves that data elsewhere, then the first
line of the TDF needs changing accordingly.

The following TDF is a hybrid between my old original B1.0 TDF and
Bill's standard one, plus some evolution and cobbling and fiddling
over the years.

The VSX option has been tested and works. The other links are
unsupported and undocumented. You can try them if you wish, they do
no harm, and don't always return results, depending on whether those
online databases have any information for that object. Some take
longer than others to return the images and/or data.

You will need to have upgraded your Guide 8 via the online updates in
relatively recent times. It's open source, but the user uses them at
their own risk, although no TDF has ever harmed anybody's data as yet.


I've just tested it for both a northern and a southern object with
successful results.

Watch for word wrap, all the lines between the line '#photo' and the
space before the line starting 'align' are single lines starting with
a ~ character, that's CHR$(126) if it gets converted in transit. The
online yahoo group web copy may be better in such cases. In that
instance, a single \ character _at line end_ is an artefact of yahoo
line splitting and should be ignored.

John


file b10.dat
title USNO B1.0 +
RA H 37 10
units0 -2
de d 49 10
text 9 12
mag 221 5
#photo R:179,5 B:137,5 I:305,5
~b 9 12 USNO B1.0 %s\n\n
~b 23 13 Tycho2 %s\n\n
~r 59 4 RA : %R +/- %s mas\n
~r 63 4 Dec : %D +/- %s mas\n\n
~r 37 10 RA : %s deg Dec :
~r 49 10 %s deg\n\n
~r 75 8 RA proper motion : %s +/- %[100,7] mas/year\n
~r 83 8 Dec proper motion : %s +/- %[107,7] mas/year\n
~r 95 5 \nSurveys : %s
~r 95 0 \n(Tycho2 Seeded)
~r 69 8 Mean Epoch : %s\n
~c137 5 B1: %s\n
~c179 5 R1: %s\n
~c221 5 B2: %s\n
~c263 5 R2: %s\n
~c305 5 I2: %s\n
~r 1 10 \n!Band mag Cal Survey field S/G\n
~r137 5 B1: %5s %[144,4]
~r145 0 0 POSS-I %[152,11]
~r145 0 1 POSS-I %[152,11]
~r145 0 2 POSS-II %[152,11]
~r145 0 3 POSS-II %[152,11]
~r145 0 4 SERC-J %[152,11]
~r145 0 5 ESO-R %[152,11]
~r145 0 6 AAO-R %[152,11]
~r145 0 7 POSS-II %[152,11]
~r145 0 8 SERC-I %[152,11]
~r145 0 9 SERC-I* %[152,11]
~r137 5 \n
~r179 5 R1: %5s %[186,4]
~r191 0 0 POSS-I %[194,11]
~r191 0 1 POSS-I %[194,11]
~r191 0 2 POSS-II %[194,11]
~r191 0 3 POSS-II %[194,11]
~r191 0 4 SERC-J %[194,11]
~r191 0 5 ESO-R %[194,11]
~r191 0 6 AAO-R %[194,11]
~r191 0 7 POSS-II %[194,11]
~r191 0 8 SERC-I %[194,11]
~r191 0 9 SERC-I* %[194,11]
~r179 5 \n
~r221 5 B2: %5s %[228,4]
~r233 0 0 POSS-I %[236,11]
~r233 0 1 POSS-I %[236,11]
~r233 0 2 POSS-II %[236,11]
~r233 0 3 POSS-II %[236,11]
~r233 0 4 SERC-J %[236,11]
~r233 0 5 ESO-R %[236,11]
~r233 0 6 AAO-R %[236,11]
~r233 0 7 POSS-II %[236,11]
~r233 0 8 SERC-I %[236,11]
~r233 0 9 SERC-I* %[236,11]
~r221 5 \n
~r263 5 R2: %5s %[270,4]
~r275 0 0 POSS-I %[278,11]
~r275 0 1 POSS-I %[278,11]
~r275 0 2 POSS-II %[278,11]
~r275 0 3 POSS-II %[278,11]
~r275 0 4 SERC-J %[278,11]
~r275 0 5 ESO-R %[278,11]
~r275 0 6 AAO-R %[278,11]
~r275 0 7 POSS-II %[278,11]
~r275 0 8 SERC-I %[278,11]
~r275 0 9 SERC-I* %[278,11]
~r263 5 \n
~r305 5 I2: %5s %[311,4]
~r315 0 0 POSS-I %[318,3] %[321,8]
~r315 0 1 POSS-I %[318,3] %[321,8]
~r315 0 2 POSS-II %[318,3] %[321,8]
~r315 0 3 POSS-II %[318,3] %[321,8]
~r315 0 4 SERC-J %[318,3] %[321,8]
~r315 0 5 ESO-R %[318,3] %[321,8]
~r315 0 6 AAO-R %[318,3] %[321,8]
~r315 0 7 POSS-II %[318,3] %[321,8]
~r315 0 8 SERC-I %[318,3] %[321,8]
~r315 0 9 SERC-I* %[318,3] %[321,8]
~r 9 1 \n\nIMAGE :
~r 9 1
^2MASS//xhttp://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/2MASS/IM/nph-im_pos?type=at&ds=asky&POS=%[37,8]d+%[49,8]d&subsz=180&date=&scan=&coadd=&key=&band=A^
~r 49 0 +
^ALADIN//xhttp://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/java//nph-aladin.pl?frame=launching&script=get+Aladin+%[37,8]+%%2B%[50,8]^
~r 49 0 -
^ALADIN//xhttp://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/java//nph-aladin.pl?frame=launching&script=get+Aladin+%[37,8]+%[49,8]^
~r 9 1
^SDSS4//xhttp://cas.sdss.org/dr4/en/tools/explore/obj.asp?ra=%[37,9]&dec=%[49,9]^\n
~r 9 1 \nDATA :
~r 49 0 +
^SIMBAD//xhttp://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/sim-id.pl?protocol=html&Ident=%[37,8]+%%2B%[50,8]&Radius=1&Radius.unit=arcmin&o.catall=on&output.mesdisp=A&b.code=on&Bibyear1=1900&output.bib=b.ref^
~r 49 0 -
^SIMBAD//xhttp://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/sim-id.pl?protocol=html&Ident=%[37,8]+%[49,8]&Radius=1&Radius.unit=arcmin&o.catall=on&output.mesdisp=A&b.code=on&Bibyear1=1900&output.bib=b.ref^
~r 9 1
^VizieR//xhttp://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-out.max=5&-out.all&-c=%[37,8]%%20%[49,8]&-c.eq=J2000.0&-oc.form=deg&-c.r=1&-c.u=arcmin&-c.geom=r&-sort=_r&!-4c=Find%%20Data^\n
~r 9 1 \n
^GALEX//xhttp://archive.stsci.edu/xcorr.php?target=%[37,9]%[49,9]&missions[]=GALEX&radius_GALEX=0.2&outputformat=HTML_Table&max_records=10&action=Search^
~r 9 1
^SDSS4//xhttp://cas.sdss.org/dr4/en/tools/search/x_radial.asp?ra=%[37,8]&dec=%[49,8]&radius=9&entries=all&format=csv^\n
~r 9 1 \n
^NED//xhttp://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/nph-objsearch?search_type=Near+Position+Search&in_csys=Equatorial&lon=%[37,8]d&lat=%[49,8]d&radius=1^
~r 9 1
^ALL//xhttp://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/QuickStats/nph-stats?objstr=%[37,8]+%[49,8]&size=1&units=arcmin&coverage=1^\n
~r 49 0 + \n
^VSX//xhttp://www.aavso.org/vsx/index.php?view=results.get&coords=%[37,8]+%%2B%[50,8]&format=d&geom=r&size=1&unit=2&order=9^
~r 49 0 - \n
^VSX//xhttp://www.aavso.org/vsx/index.php?view=results.get&coords=%[37,8]+%[49,8]&format=d&geom=r&size=1&unit=2&order=9^

align 17
epoch 2000
goto case
type 6
type sCffffff;e0,0,6;
field 0.00 1.00
mag lim 230
shown 5
end