Alrighty then. To finish off (I only really popped in to do the UCAC3 thing, and now Bill's got that well sorted, it's become irrelevant), I'll mention the B files. Now, this is unsupported. Roger showed the UCAC3 thing worked. Despite any weird and wonderful theories on my part why some people's stuff didn't work, Bill's upgrades working shows that the simplest solution is that with the best will in the World somehow some users have accidentally saved the edited files elsewhere to where they think they've saved them. An interesting thing for them to do, for their own interest, is to read their new download.txt and toolbar.dat files created since the upgrade and see what they say now.

So this is unsupported, if it works for you it works, if it doesn't, well, ensure you back up any file to be used before doing any of this.

You want to back up your WDS.tdf and your wds.dat file.


The /B/ Files at CDS

Although on occasions the B subdirectory will contain massive datasets, it primarily hosts files that are perpetually or intermittently updated. This saves the CDS team having to repeatedly obsolete old paths and create new ones. Updated lists like log files have lived hear a long time, but since the start of this year there have been half a dozen or so additions. Some, like xmm, won't interest most people, some others still only include a sample of the full dataset at the ftp archive. Some contain full updates in a more accessible form than they are usually delivered.

Four will be mentioned here, with one being concentrated upon as example.

The /B/ subfolder lives here

ftp://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/pub/cats/B

The ones noted will be WDS, GCVS, SB9 and VSX.

The one demonstrated will be WDS.

Click on wds at the above url.

Click on readme and read it.

Notice at the bottom that this file is updated once per month, roughly, continuously since the beginning of this year.

This is the perpetually latest WDS. It contains amendments and appendments as they appear in the professional literature at random, and amendments and appendments (ie new objects) as they appear regularly in the quarterly Journal of Double Star Observations and the kind of annual Webb Society Double Star Section Circular.

The latest WDS as sourced via the WDS server has two problems for the Guide 8 user. The coordinates' column for lost objects is blank. Thus Bill G. wrote add_loc.exe which copies the very approximate coordinates of the WDS coordinate based identifier to that column, and probably incidentally sorts the whole on RA whilst it is at it (the file is sorted on RA already, but _not_ full J2000 RA, which is what Guide needs really. It's B1900 RA sorted I think, possibly mixed in with others for newer doubles).

Now, this too served as a problem for the CDS team, it seems, as they too populate these blank fields in the coorinates column with the approximate positions as taken from the WDS coordiante identifier in the first columns. They also precede those coordinates with a ! character.

This allows two things. One is WDS.dat can now be directly downloaded from ftp://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/pub/cats/B/wds/ , just like mpcorb is downloaded for asteroids, and simply replace the old one, once per month or so, and the very latest up to date version is received with the user having to do nothing.

If only...

Unfortunately it's not sorted on RA.

Bill has a sorting program. It lives here

http://www.projectpluto.com/xz80q.zip

contained within this zip file and is called sorter.exe

You backup your old wds.dat, in case of errors.

You download the new wds.dat from the above ftp directory (you can just right click on it in a browser and say save as, currently nearly a 14 Mb download).

You rename the freshly downloaded file to wds.new in however way you rename things. Not wds.dat.new, not wds.new.dat, but wds.new. Actually you can rename it to anything you want, but only if you really and truly know what you are doing, otherwise follow the verbatim route.

Now, you place all of wds.new and sorter.exe in the same directory. The same folder.

You start a DOS Window or a DOS Box or a Command Prompt window or however you wish to call it. You change drive and subdirectory within the DOS box to the drive and subdirectory where both these files live. If you have absolutely no idea how to do this, return your backup of wds.dat and don't bother going any further.

If you've placed sorter.exe and wds.new in the same place and navigated to that place within your dos box you simply type at the command prompt

sorter wds.new wds.dat 113

wds.new is sorted on column 113 and the result placed in wds.dat

Column 113 is where the coordinates for J2000 start.

You copy WDS.dat to your Guide directory, and use the below TDF, or the copy of it from the Yahoo files folder I'm going to upload.

This is a minimalistic TDF. Those who follow TDFs can take things from it and merge it with the standard Guide one if they wish. I'm pretty certain the WDS.dat from the WDS website and the WDS.dat from the CDS ftp site have the same column layout, but I am not sure and I have not checked. Certainly there are new flags and some other things in the new WDS 2006.5 layout that the current standard Guide TDF likely doesn't touch. Some are very new.

Whatever, the below TDF has one extra test, it tests for ! in column 112, and if it finds that it says "position uncertain" in the help popup and more info pages, which means the coordinates are from the star's name.

As WDS did a great deal of revision to double star positions in recent times, vastly increasing the arcsecond accurate positions of many (using 2MASS mostly amongst other resources), these objects still without coordinates are often technically "lost", where lost has several definitions, including at times "well and truly lost", but also often meaning "currently misplaced".

And that's that.

WDS will have a lot of update work soon, I believe. For several years now some of the team have been stating openly in places like binary stars uncensored and on the WDS webpages that revisions to the catalogue will be made once a final version of UCAC3 was available. As UCAC3 says it can split some paired objects down to one arcsecond separation (the lowest used limit was six in UCAC2) it will be possible to deal with more doubles than previously, UCAC3 is also all sky. Proper motion information in the WDS catalogue at least will likely be heavily revised, probably mostly with the addition of proper motions for the secondaries in pairs (this'll help sort out the optical stars from the potential and true binaries).

HOWEVER, you might not want to download every month, once a year might be better. You might not be interested in new doubles, only want to look at the classical ones, the centuries old ones.

Well, in that case the following TDF adds a feature that makes full use of the fact that VizieR now carries regularly uptodate versions, and also gives the added bonus of easy access to peripheral files like the WDS notes!

Goto TDF for the below, double click on WDS, insert I 34AB-C.

If you prefer to GOTO I 34 then you must edit the line that says

text 11 13

to now say

text 11 7.

Right click on the object in question, you may have to zoom in and press the next button a lot, it's a busy "double" star is this one. When you've finally got the popup help box for I 34 AB-C click the More Info button. At the bottom of the help is a red underlined WDS. This link will launch a browser window, when pressed, that will display the latest full WDS entry for this double, and any other double sharing the exact same WDS identifier, as served by VizieR.

Not only is the data uptodate, but if you scroll sideways in the webpage you will see there you can click on links which will give you the notes for B 1705 AD, it's a spectroscopic binary apparently. Clicking on the discovery ID names will give you the full paper reference.

Try a similar thing, GOTO TDF and More Info -> WDS web link, again with something like GRV1156, a common proper motion pair sharing the same small field with the spiral galaxy M88 and the cataclysmic variable AL Comae Berenices. A "new" double.

That's it. Simple to use, always uptodate. Unfortunately you need to sort it on column 113. You _don't_ have to sort it if you change the line

sort 1

in the TDF to

sort 0

Which expects unsorted data

You might not have to sort it even with the code sort 1 (I'm not up on the very latest versions of Guide 8 upgrades).

But you might not like the decline in screen plotting speed that results. If that turns out not to be a problem, all you need to do is copy new versions of wds.dat from the CDS ftp site to your Guide directory.

TDF below.


NOW, you can also do this with the GCVS file GCVS_CAT.DAT stored at ftp://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/pub/cats/B/gcvs

In this instance I think the file gcvs_cat.dat is a direct copy of iii.dat from the GCVS website, so you can use the standard latest Guide GCVS tdf with it, as long as you rename the file to the name that tdf expects and place it in the Guide directory (don't forget to backup your current iii.dat or whatever first).

Again, you may need to sort it.

I have not tested the compatability of gcvs_cat.dat to iii.dat, as I don't use that route.

But I can say that this line added to your tdf should hopefully launch you into the GCVS web summary pages for any particular variable if clicked on in More Info

~r 9 5 \n^GCVS//xhttp://www.sai.msu.su/groups/cluster/gcvs/cgi-bin/search.cgi?search=%s+%[15,3]^

that's all one line, in case of wordwrap, and there is a SPACE between the 5 and the \n when you fix the line.

GCVS is perpetually revised, and once a coupla years or few added to.


SB9 is the catalogue of Spectroscopic Binaries, it evolves too, and isn't all that friendly a system on the web server it lives at, at least not for Guide 8 it isn't. However, there are only just about 3000 listed, and these stars aren't of any interest to observers. You would have to write your own TDF.


OCL might interest the deepsky guys. It's the Alessi open cluster stuff. I'm not too interested in that as the data is messily put together and it's difficult to make it Guide friendly, but I know some Guide TDF writers like the deepsky stuff, that and updates live also at /B/, with the relevant update logging readme being this

ftp://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/pub/cats/B/ocl/v2.10/readme.txt


A newer inclusion in the arena is AAVSO VSX. A collection of collections of variable stars. Sometimes it carries variable star lists that aren't in VizieR or CDS ftp sites, because the data manager Patrick Wils is constantly "feeding" it with these. It doesn't have them all though, VizieR will still surprisingly pop up variable stuff not included, at least not in the B/VSX output.

That has a gzipped version, so it'd have to be unzipped first, and it will need a TDF writing. That too could have a web link in More Info which would point back to VizieR, especially if the OID field is used, and which latter can also link out to the source database server.


But each of these lists (except possibly the OCL one) are fixed in format and should only need to be downloaded to give the latest uptodate situation.

The sorting thing is a bit of a problem, however that can be learnt soon enough. Possibly even automated if someone wanted to write a winblows front end file browser thing that people could go and fetch the downloaded file with, then the cli invocation would be parsed reading the full pathnames of the file parsed via this browser thing. I've seem similar before used for old cli stuff still uniquely not converted to windows, usually carrying tons of switches, but anathema to those not familiar with the old DOS ways, so people generate winblows "front ends" that allowing browsing to open the file, choose a save as name, and then run the dos executable (here it'd need to include an input for column number to sort on).

And that's that. It is, as is often very much the case, a lot easier and quicker to do than it actually is to explain it.

With constantly changing data in the modern era if people want the latest and the most uptodate they've to put a bit of effort into it, including learning how to do some things. The things needing to be learnt are usually easily learnt by rote (most of it is simply learning where the data lives and what column the coordinates start in if the data needs sorting). But often it can only be semiautomated, not full automated. Although, given a coupla tweaks to the current TDFs, it's possible that these new additions to the B files at VizieR may well allow the possibility at least of WDS and GCVS updates being pretty much automatable.

This B file thing is a practice that may well grow, in terms of the smaller perpetually updating catalogues. Bill has allowed for this well in things like ucac3, cmc14 or sdss download, for very big files (most of these are now complete and will no longer update, either), but such is somewhat overkill for things like variables and doubles and some deepsky object catalogues that are perpetually revised, but are for objects widely spaced across the sky. The toolbar download for a small area doesn't fit. In the past downloading new versions meant specific, sometimes obscure, website knowledge. The B directory keeps such things in a constant, steady, source home. And hopefully in a fixed format. Current use, given a relevant TDF, is semiautomatic updating. Could be automatic if unsorted files are not a problem.

Cheers

John

The usual, cut and paste into a text editor, save as wds.tdf and only as wds.tdf in the Guide directory, place the B file version of WDS.dat in the Guide directory. Set line 'text' to 11 13 or 11 7 according to GOTO TDF preference.

The web url line will wordwrap. There are two lines, one for positive declinations and one for negative ones (vizier's fault, not mine). If you have four lines, make them into two, with a SPACE between the respective - and + symbols and the following \n code.

A copy will appear in guide-user yahoo webpages files.

--B file WDS.dat tdf starts below, set sort 0 for unsorted wds.dat--
file wds.dat
title WDS
RA H 113 2
RA M 115 2
RA S 117 5
de d 122 3
de m 125 2
de s 127 4
mag 59 5
text 11 13
~b 11 13 %s
~r 1 10 = WDS%s
~b 1 1 \n\n
~r113 8 RA 2000 : %R\n
~r122 7 Dec2000 : %D\n\n
~b 59 5 mag %s
~b 65 5 and %s
~b111 1 %s
~b 65 5 \n
~b 47 5 \nrho %s arcsecs
~b 24 4 in %s
~b 53 5 \nrho %s arcsecs
~b 29 4 in %s
~b 39 3 \ntheta %s degrees
~b 24 4 in %s
~b 43 3 \ntheta %s degrees
~b 29 4 in %s
~b 39 4 \n
~b 81 4 \nmu RAcos[Dec] %s mas/y\n
~b 90 4 mu RAcos[Dec] %s mas/y\n
~b 85 4 mu Dec %s mas/y\n
~b 94 4 mu Dec %s mas/y\n
~b 71 9 \nSpectral Type %s\n
~r 99 9 \nDM %s\n
~r 1 1 \n
~b109 0 O Orbit\n
~b109 0 C Linear & Orbit\n
~b109 0 L Linear\n
~b109 0 P mu is 10mas/y\n
~b109 0 X Dubious\n
~b108 0 N See Notes\n
~b109 0 S Optical\n
~b109 0 T Physical\n
~b109 0 U Optical\n
~b109 0 V Physical\n
~b109 0 Y Optical\n
~b109 0 Z Physical\n
~r110 0 D deltaM cat\n
~b111 0 I ID Uncertain\n
~b112 0 ! Position Uncertain\n
~r 6 0 + \n^WDS//xhttp://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?&-source=B/wds/wds&-out.all&WDS=%[1,5]%%2B%[7,4]^\n
~r 6 0 - \n^WDS//xhttp://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?&-source=B/wds/wds&-out.all&WDS=%[1,10]^\n

epoch 2000
type 6
type sCffffff;
sort 1
label spaces
goto spaces
goto case
field 0.00 50.00
mag lim 180
shown 1
end
------------tdf ended the line before this one--------