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Session 7 - Catalogs & Surveys.
Display session, Monday, January 13
Metropolitan Ballroom,
With the advent of space-based star catalogs of unprecedented accuracy and the measurement of the Palomar Schmidt Survey plates, there is a pressing need for a new high-quality catalog covering the stars in the intermediate magnitudes. Testing with the USNO 8-inch CCD astrograph, equipped with a new, 5-element lens and a small CCD camera have shown that accuracies of 20mas or better can be obtained in a reasonable time using a two-fold overlap method. A grating allows stars as bright as 6th magnitude to be observed at the same time as the faintest stars. A program is planned to start within a year in the Southern Hemisphere using this telescope and a new 4K CCD camera. The goal is to produce an astrometric catalog of all stars down to 15th magnitude in a period of two years.
