Bright Star Catalogue in JSON format

This repo contains the complete BSC5P (Bright Star Catalog, 5th Edition) converted to JSON format. Acronyms avoided where possible to make things a tad more readable. All original data is preserved and unchanged. A massively streamlined version can be found here, which includes reasonable changes such as polyfilling missing info and adding post-calculated data.

This repo came into existence because of a lack of ready-made resources while working on the Cosmosis game project (and I can see why there are no complete JSON sources - conversions done here are over 6x larger).

The scripts used to perform the conversion are included in this repo in case anyone needs the data adjusted, see 'Scripts provided' section below.

Fields saved as camel case to be JavaScript appropriate.

Catalog files provided:

• bsc5p.json - Original BSC5P catalog data, converted to JSON format. Prettified.
• bsc5p_min.json - Identical to bsc5p.json, but not prettified.
• bsc5p_extra.json - Contains everything bsc5p.json does, but adds additional parallax, spectral, and name information obtained from other catalogs. This reduces the amount of stars not having parallax information from ~95% to ~0.5%.
• bsc5p_extra_min.json - Identical to bsc5p_extra.json, but not prettified.

Scripts provided:

• catalogToJson.js - Converts the original BSC5P catalog (stored in original_bsc5p/catalog) to JSON format.
• cacheBsc5pSimbadStarData.js - Downloads cross-referenced information from the simbad.u-strasbg.fr astronomical database. Note that it's provided only for the sake of completion, and you do not need to run this script as this repo contains all downloaded files already. (As an aside, I'm very thankful to the owners for providing this service, my side-projects would be virtually impossible feats without it).
• enrichStarData.js - Parses the cached Simbad pages, reads bsc5p_min.json, extends the latter with the processed info, and then saves the changes as two new files (bsc5p_extra.json and bsc5p_extra_min.json).
• check_broken_cache.sh - Convenience script that looks for queries that returned no results.

Description

Excerpt from original:

Overview

The BSC5P database table contains data derived from the Bright Star Catalog, 5th Edition, preliminary, which is widely used as a source of basic astronomical and astrophysical data for stars brighter than magnitude 6.5. The database contains the identifications of included stars in several other widely-used catalogs, double- and multiple-star identifications, indication of variability and variable-star identifiers, equatorial positions for B1900.0 and J2000.0, galactic coordinates, UBVRI photoelectric photometric data when they exist, spectral types on the Morgan-Keenan (MK) classification system, proper motions (J2000.0), parallax, radial- and rotational-velocity data, and multiple-star information (number of components, separation, and magnitude differences) for known non-single stars.

References

Hoffleit, D. and Warren, Jr., W.H., 1991, "The Bright Star Catalog, 5th Revised Edition (Preliminary Version)".

Provenance

This table was created by the HEASARC in 1995 based upon a file obtained from either the ADC or the CDS. A number of revisions have been made by the HEASARC to this original version, e.g., celestial positions were added for the 14 non-stellar objects which have received HR numbers: HR 92, 95, 182, 1057, 1841, 2472, 2496, 3515, 3671, 6309, 6515, 7189, 7539 and 8296. In January 2014, the very incorrect position for HR 3671 = NGC 2808 was fixed (the Declination is -65 degrees not +65 degrees!), and smaller corrections were made to the positions of HR 2496, 3515 and 6515 so as to bring them in better agreement with the positions listed in SIMBAD and NED

Legal

Use of catalog data subject to HEASARC terms of use.

Caching query responses from Simbad subject to the SIMBAD Astronomical Database terms of use.

Scripts written to facilitate conversion released to public domain under CC0.

Acknowledgments

This research has made use of the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France.

This research has made use of the VizieR catalogue access tool, CDS, Strasbourg, France (DOI : 10.26093/cds/vizier). The original description of the VizieR service was published in 2000, A&AS 143, 23.