This is getting a bit painful, so here goes...

If you google on exoplanet lists you'll find if you check most of the hits that they haven't been updated since 2006 in the vast majority of cases.

There are one or two new ones, but they tend to be like brown dwarf lists, some professional astronomer seems to start one up, sets up the page, and either loses interest or moves on to another field of research, and the list becomes moribund.

Two current active live lists exist, both have been mentioned here. One, the exoplanet.eu one, is actually included in notes and linkouts from SIMBAD, for instance if you go to the randomly chosen SIMBAD page for

http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?protocol=html&Ident=HIP+30905

you'll see a link next to "essential notes" for the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia, this is the previously mentioned exoplanet.eu, run by some guy at the Paris Observatory. This is a more directly accessible catalogue than the other one in that it has direct export features.

Most things nowadays that have been published as lists will end up in VizieR or at CDS ftp and you can make a TDF for files from those, via various ways, sometimes directly.

But still some small little compilation lists are the only way to get at some data, and they are usually home grown, die off, and rarely updated, and very web interactive, so the data is hard to get at. And as Bill says, because often the professionals doing this sort of work aren't astronomers directly, they tend to leave out really important things like the positions of the stars, which Guide needs to do any plotting, of course.

Even the above exoplanet.eu site has vagaries. The transiting exoplanet candidates are not flagged in the all inclusive full catalogue, so you either have to use the subcatalogues to identify those, by making your own, or ignore the fact mostly (except for something said later). Obviously for something that needs regularly updating you need to get a new copy regularly with minimum of fuss. Look how much trouble the recent MPC problems caused when people wanted to update their comet and asteroid data files and things became "fiddly" (when all they had to do was find a file online at the new MPC site, save it onto hard disk, and use the feature in Guide that lets you import that. However, as the direct link in Guide no longer worked things started falling to bits easily for some).

Now, before fixing this, let's note something else. Possibly, if Bill had had time, and if VizieR and CDS ftp didn't exist as a source of data files (and it isn't only Guide that uses these you know, software like astrometrica and various others sample large astrometric catalogues via online VizieR connection) and quite frankly if the need for accessing such data files wasn't so small and infrequent, Guide might've had a feature developed to allow automatic import of VOTables with on the fly TDF generation to display the tables in Guide. VOTable carries all that's needed for that, but it's a lot of xml programming, and still likely not completely automatable such that each new table source would need some tweaking.

In the end it would have been a waste of effort, because despite VOTable having just about universally caught on now, and being used in lots of places, it is already going to be supplanted by TAP. Images and spectra are already distributed mostly by SIAP and SSAP, which are variables of a www. web protocol computing thingy called SOAP. But TAP (the T stands for "Table") has only just started, and it will likely be a few years before it is widespread, let alone finished. When that time comes data import will be wisest geared to that.

But currently for obscure odds and ends and dynamic update stuff, like exoplanet lists, which can grow topically as new objects are found every other month, and similarly for things like brown dwarfs and other dynamic lists, if people want things like that they will need to start using VOTables and converting them in TOPCAT and then learning basic GUIDE TDF principles. It is not hard, it is in fact quite basic, and the bestest way to learn to do it is from an already existing skeleton TDF.

So, as a walk through, I shall now provide the latest exoplanet TDF for Guide using exoplanet.eu as source, and giving a skeleton TDF with guidelines on how to extend it for personal preference, and how to import the updated data into it via VOTable source and TOPCAT conversion.

First TOPCAT lives here :-

http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/topcat/

and if you're too worried about instaling things, and all is explained easily there, then you can use the WEBSTART routes. Install the full, not the lite, version of TOPCAT, it's barely any bigger.

If you haven't got JAVA you can get Sun JAVA as explained on that webpage and just install it, like installing any other thing on your OS. It more or less does it all for you.

Java JRE (runtime enviroment) version is all you need, the SDK is the software developer's kit and is lots bigger and not needed. Most people may well find they already have sufficient java installed with their OS to not even do this.

When you run TOPCAT the first thing you do is load a file, the file you are going to load comes from here :-

http://exoplanet.eu/catalog-all.php?mdAff=output#tc

as someone else has already said.

However, at the bottom of page you click VOTable and then press the download button.

This will lead you to save a .xml file to disk.

In TOPCAT you use the menu, File -> Load Table

in the resulting dialogue you set the FORMAT to VOTable from the pulldown shown when clicking on the downward triangle there.

Then click on Filestore Browser and navigate to votable-exoplanet.xml, using the mouse mostly (java apps don't always respond to keyboard shortcuts like MS windows apps do), then select/highlight it and press OK button. It will be imported into TOPCAT.

Under Current Table Properties you have one option called Sort Order, it's sixth down and has an upward pointing yellow arrow.

Select the black downward triangle to the right of that, and scroll down the list until you get to St_Right_Asc (it's the next to last row), and select that.

You are now sorting on the Stars' Right Ascension of the data from the .xml file. Most lists work better in Guide sorted on RA, but data is often not provided sorted, and this is often the trickiest thing for people.

Now to export it to an ascii format Guide can parse via TDF.

At the menu it's File -> Save Table

You'll see that you have another chance to select the sort order column to be used in the new dialogue box, in case you forgot to, and/or check it is set to St_Right_Asc.

Click on the downward black triangle to the right of the words "Output Format" and scroll down and select TEXT.

Use the filestore browser to nagivate to wherever you wish to save this file, and name it whichever way you wish to. You now have an RA sorted exoplanet list capable of being plotted up in Guide.

That's it. Once you've set this up you can convert any VOTable file to normal ascii text from wherever sourced, so although this seems a lot of effort, once set up it works easily and can have widespread use.

Some things only allow votable and fits table download, and TOPCAT will convert fits tables (not images, tables) to and from other formats, to text, to comma delimited csv, and many other formats.

Now, load that file into a text editor and insert the following lines before it (you can cut and paste from here) :-

---------cut/copy from the following line---------
file exoplanet.tdf
title Exoplanets
RA H 308 2
ra m 311 2
ra s 314 2
de d 325 3
de m 329 2
de s 332 2
text 3 20
~b 1 1 Exoplanets\n\n
~b 3 20 %s\n\n
~r 308 8 R.A.2000 %R\n
~r 325 9 Dec2000 %D\n\n
~b 54 12 Period %s days\n
~b 143 10 Inclination %s degrees\n
~b 235 14 Spectrum %s\n\n


epoch 2000
type sCa6a6ff;+40
sort 1
label spaces
goto spaces
goto case
field 0.00 900.00
shown 1
end

;the following data is downloaded in votable format from http://exoplanet.eu/catalog-all.php?mdAff=output#tc
;and converted to fixed column text using TOPCAT http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/topcat/
--------cut/copy to the previous line----------


save the file

make a copy of the file.

Rename that copy to exoplanet.tdf , exactly, no exoplanet.tdf.txt nor any other variation. Putting the name in quotes will ensure this if uncertain.

Copy this file to you guide directory.

When the exoplanet list is updated online, download the new votable, convert it with topcat, and replace the list in the above file with the new data file.

OR

and this might be easier.

Paste the above TDF file into a text editor.

change the first line to read as :-

file exoplanet.dat

instead of the 'file exoplanet.tdf' it currently says

save that file as

exoplanet.tdf

copy it to the Guide directory.

Rename your text file exported from topcat as

exoplanet.dat

and also copy that to the guide directory.

then whenever you make a new exoplanet list after an update at the website, you save the text file as exoplanet.dat and just copy it to your Guide directory (probably best to make a copy of the old exoplanet.dat in case something has changed in the table at the website, which often happens), with no need to touch the exoplanet.tdf file every again.

And that's how you have to do such things, Bill can't do any magic fix, because it doesn't exist, because the problem isn't one with Guide, it's all to do with how the data is provided, and when people provide data in complicated and fancy ways, with information missing, or mixed or spread about, you either have to edit the data by hand and make your own lists, or accept the nearest best fit list to what you want and compromise with that.

Now the above TDF lets you make your own custom TDF for exoplanets by using other columns from the data as preferred.

All the lines saying

~b cs cl english %s\n\n

are all you need.

So, you have a line that says

~b 54 12 Period %s days\n\n

which means, on right click in Guide the pop up box for that object will write

Period x.xxxx days

on a line/row.

The value written instead of x.xxxx will be the value that is written in the data file starting at column (cs) 54, that's column 54, and cl is column length, that is, starting at column 54 write everything that exists for the next 12 columns. This will also be written like this in More Info help screen, but with a line gap after it before any other data in that case (as \n\n means new lines, \n means one new line follows).

So, for instance, if you wanted to quote the distance to the star, how would we add that?

Well, first we decide what order we want it to appear at. If we want it to appear before the Period in days, then we write it on the line before that, if after a line, then after whichever line.

Then we start the row with

~b

if we want it to be written _only_ on the right click pop up box we start with

~c

if we want it to appear _only_ in the More Info help screen (like RA and Dec in this TDF) we start it with

~r

~b means appear in _b_oth of those.

we count (most text editors will tell you the column number of a column if you click on it, otherwise just simply count) from what the start column in exoplanet.tdf/.dat for st_dist, the star distance, is. It is column 207. Sometimes you have to ensure the text editor calls the first column column 1, if it calls it column 0 this can make your numbering off by one.

so the line is now

~b 207

we want to know how many columns the st_dist uses to give it's information

we have to count them in this case 10 columns from and including column 207 should cover all cases, with spare capacity. Sometimes you have to scroll up and down data to ensure that you give enough columns for any long entries, other times when things are positive and negative you have to check for that, as although negatives always start with a minus sign positives sometimes have a blank instead of a plus. Thus if you could have negative distances, there might be a need to start at column 206. But there are no negative distances, so this is fine this time.

We now have

~b 207 10

start at column 207 and read for 10 columns worth of text/data/numerics.

Now, the English bit, or whichever language preferred.

We are dealing with star distance here, so whatever is preferred can be placed, for example

~b 207 10 Distance to Star is

then we use a special code, %s . This is placed where you want the entry at column 207 onwards to appear in the output box/help screen in Guide, so

~b 207 10 Distance to Star is %s

will appear as

Distance to star is 22.3

if the entry at column 207 for 10 columns' length has the number 22.3 written there.

Then we can have more English/whateverish

the distances is in parsecs, so here we will use

~b 207 10 Distance to Star is %s parsecs

now, if we leave it at that the next line written by the tdf will appear on the same line, which is sometimes useful, but normally the next thing needs to appear on a new line, else we'll have one very, very long jumbled up line.

\n does this.

so we have

~b 207 10 Distance to Star is %s parsecs\n

another \n will write two new lines, another three, and so on.

Now I haven't entered these other columns in my basic tdf for two reasons.

First, not all columns are needed, some will prefer some, some will prefer others. This way they can choose what they want to display.

But mostly because most of the data quoted and published for exoplanets is utter bunkum, or at best very approximate.

For instance, take the entry for HD 2039. The distance is quoted as being 89.8 parsecs.

If you check in Guide you'll find the distance according to Hipparcos is 89.8 +/- 9.1 parsecs, based on Hipparcos parallax measures, currenty the best source for distance for this star.

Or the distance is about 80 to 100 parsecs, or 90 ish parsecs.

So what, no big deal you say.

Well, this distance is then used along with a measure of the apparent magnitude, and possibly bolometrically adjusted with information of the spectrum and metallicity, to derive the star's absolute magnitude, and thence the star's luminosity.

The luminosity is then used via an approximate, empirically derived, proportionality, to give the mass of the star, because single stars cannot be weighed.

Given spectroscopic radial velocities the entire mass of the system can be derived, in the same way as is done for spectroscopic binaries.

Given the assumed mass, based on the luminosity, itself assumed from the supposed distance, you then have a mass determination for the star and the total mass and from this you can estimate the proportion of the mass that is that belonging to the planet.

Now, the mass of Jupiter is very nearly 0.001 Solar Masses, a thousandth of our Sun, roughly.

The mass of HD 2039 is given in this table as 0.98 Solar Masses. The mass of HD 2039 b is given as 4.9 Jovian Masses.

that's roughly 0.005 Solar Masses for the "exoplanet" and very nearly 1 Solar Mass for the host star. But the mass is derived from the luminosity, which is derived from the absolute magnitude, which is derived from the apparent magnitude and the distance, and the distance is only known to +/- 10%, and the relation is a logarithmic one too, whilst the mass luminosity relation is roughly a cube law (probably inverse cube if I remember rightly).

Worse, 4.9 Jupiters as a mass is the _minimum_ mass. The radial velocity measures are not solved for inclination, this does not appear to be a transiting exoplanet, so no inclination is measured/known. The way the mathematics works the mass of 4.9 Jupiters only applies if the line of sight is 90 degrees, in which case it would be a transiting object. So, as this is a lower limit, the mass is likely higher to much higher than this.

This is why some tables are honest and write "sin(i)" with the Mass in the header for that column.

However, all of them forget to include sine of inclination for the SemiMajor axes, which again are lower limits if the inclination is not known, and are also dependent on distance to the star. For nontransiting stars the stellar radius is again derived via approximations.

So accordingly I've only included measurables in the basic TDF. The catalogue spectrum they've quoted for the star, the period they've derived for the exoplanet candidate's orbit, and the inclination when measured. When the inclination is quoted this is telling us that this exoplanet candidate is a transiting exoplanet, so that is how the transiting objects can be differentiated in this list, they have a quoted inclination.

Anyway, a copy of the TDF as of today which will plot exoplanet hosts as a large labelled pink + around their host star with some more info help provided displayed for fields of up to 90 degree width can be found here

http://wikisend.com/download/495116/exoplanet.zip

just unzip it and copy it to your Guide directory. It should be available for download for 28 days.

That should act as a skeleton to derive the exoplanet list you want. If you cannot figure out how to use Topcat, you can add new planets as you learn of them by adding them in a text editor by hand.

There are only two rules for that, you decide which columns you are interested in and ensure that the data for those are entered in the proper columns, in line with the data for other stars, and also you insert the new objects in the proper RA order, by inserting a new row within the document in the appropriate place, or you'll bust the TDF, which expects the data to be RA sorted. As long as you get the RA and Dec column entries in the right columns the thing will still plot, but More Info etc will write garbage if other data are entered in the wrong columns.

John