A Comparison of Large All-Sky Catalogs, by Douglas J. Mink,
Warren Brown, and Michael J. Kurtz, presented at the annual meeting
of the Division on Dynamical Astronomy of the American Astronomical
Society, Ithaca, NY, May 3-7, 2003.
WCSTools: An Image Astrometry Toolkit
by Douglas J. Mink, Warren Brown, and Michael J. Kurtz
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Recent large catalogs, such as the US Naval Observatory's 526,280,881
source A2.0 and 1,036,366,767 source B1.0 Catalogs, the 998,402,801
source Guide Star Catalog II, and the 155,569,249 source (so far) 2
Micron All Sky Survey Point Source Catalog, have revolutionized our
ability to do astrometry with CCD images. The recently published FITS
World Coordinate System standard has provided a standard way of
parameterizing that astrometry, and the WCSTools and SExtractor software
packages allow the automation of the "plate-fitting" process. New
instruments for ground-based observing, such as multi-fiber spectrographs,
need very accurate positions for objects even fainter than those in these
large catalogs. As part of a survey to be conducted with one of these
new spectrographs, we have amassed 1728 15 by 30 arcminute CCD images
of a portion of the northern sky. After matching 200 to 400 point
sources per image to the various catalogs and fitting world coordinate
systems to them, we present statistics as to how well each catalog
matches our portion of the sky.
![[WCSTools]](../wcsicon.gif)