DDA2001, April2001
Session 4. Posters
Tuesday, 8:00pm

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[4.01] Status of the UCAC project

N. Zacharias (USNO), M.I. Zacharias (USRA / USNO), T.J. Rafferty (USNO)

By mid September 2001 operations of the USNO CCD astrograph (UCA) at CTIO will come to an end. The instrument will be relocated to Flagstaff, AZ in October. The entire Southern Hemisphere was covered by August 2000. The goal is to reach as far north as +30 degree declination for most right ascensions. The current UCA Catalog is used to validate 2MASS astrometry, is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey reduction pipeline and is widely used in the minor planet community. Plans for a second, intermediate data release (UCAC2) will be presented, which again will include proper motions. The UCAC2 will be based on over 130,000 frames and it will contain an estimated 40 million stars between red magnitudes 8 and 16, with 20 mas accurate positions for the 10 to 14 mag range. However issues like completeness, multiple stars, object classification and resolving of systematic errors to the limit of the data will be handled only in the final catalog release, expected for 2004.


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