Automatically getting RA, Dec, etc. for a list of objects

[smolloy]

Hi all,

I have a longish list (~100 or so) of objects that I would like to get coordinates, magnitude, etc., data for, but the list is a little too long to do by hand.

Is there a way to do this automatically?

I have some coding experience, so I don't mind writing some code that interfaces with stellarium/CDC/etc.

Thanks,

Steve

[Merlin66]

What type of objects - stellar or DSO?

AstroPlanner V2 has a comprehensive database of hundreds of catalogues. If you enter the name of the object it would generate the info.

[pgwenlan]

Take a look at this thread - link on the 2nd message is for spreadsheets by GJBC.

http://stargazerslounge.com/suggestions-bugs-errors-foibles/161319-excel-spreadsheets.html

Might be useful for you......

[smolloy]

Thanks guys.

I'll have a look into those options.

My list contains all sorts of objects -- galaxies, nebulae, carbon stars, double stars, etc. -- so I need a pretty thorough catalog. Also, there are enough of them that I don't want to have to enter them by hand into a search form -- I'd much rather use some scripting language (Python?) to extract the data for each of them automagically.

This Cartes du Ciel link looks promising...

I'll let you know what I figure out.

[Armsoft]

Take a look at this thread - link on the 2nd message is for spreadsheets by GJBC.

http://stargazerslounge.com/suggestions-bugs-errors-foibles/161319-excel-spreadsheets.html

Might be useful for you......

Excellent spreadsheet by GJBC, it's helped me a huge amount.

Mark

[NickK]

You could run against Viser in the same way that Aladin does.

[Merlin66]

Yeah, but you'd still need to input the individual entries...and I think this database is for stellar only?

[dph1nm]

If you are into progamming and your objects have well-known names then you can use sesame

Sesame Name Resolver

So, for example,

http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/nph-sesame/?M31

returns a file of useful information on M31, which includes RA and Dec. So you would then need to parse this to get the numbers you want.

NigelM