Exercise: Make a scrapbook from a set of positions

This exercise is an answer to a colleague at JPL who is involved with the Terrestrial Planet Finder mission, which uses interfermetry of nearby stars to detect orbiting planets.

 

My colleague was given a list of 125 stars that are candidates for detailed search. Each star was identified by identifiers in the Hipparcos, HDraper, and Gliese catalogs. What he wants is the size, distance, and temperature of each star in order to evaluate photon fluxes. He sent me the list as Microsoft Excel. What I was able to find was magnitude and spectral type for each star, returning the result as Excel. Here is how.

 

(1) Go to the Simbad database (http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/Simbad and mirrors) and pick the "by mail" link, and read how to do it.

 

(2) We will make a list of stars, with some header lines to define the output format, then send the file to Simbad (smbmail@simbad.u-strasbg.fr), and results come back in email.

 

(3) First we use Excel to make the basic text file. I split out the HD numbers, and used the Excel "concatenate" function to turn each number (eg 739) into a target name (eg "HD 739").

 

(4) The Simbad command syntax is a bit squirrely. I wanted to use the "|" character as a delimiter. What I came up with is this:

SIMBAD interrogation
mailaddr: roy@cacr.caltech.edu
commands:
listdata
/session use format myformat
FIELD 12 30 +30 DIM 10/10
ID HD
TEXT "|" 
JCOO "%10.6dCa|%10.6dCd|%6.2V|%6.2Ma|%6.2Md|%6.2P" 
TEXT "|" 
MAG (10) 
TEXT "|" 
SP 10
TEXT "|" 
OTYPE E20
FIN 
/env set FM-LIST myformat 
idlist:
HD 739
HD 1388
HD 1461
...etc etc for 125 entries ....

(5) I sent this to the Simbad address, and received a table with position, spectral type, magnitudes, and other information, that was easy to turn import into Excel.