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March 10, 1999     Errors in star catalog     MISAO Project Announce Mail (Mar. 10, 1999) Hello. I am Seiichi Yoshida working on the MISAO project. In the last MISAO Project Announce Mail issued on Mar. 5, 1999, the list of MISAO catalog errors, not detected at all but recorded in the catalog, was published, Then Dr. Arne Henden pointed out that since the wavelengths are different between images of the MISAO Project and the GSC or USNO-A1.0 catalogs, such stars not detected in the MISAO Project cannot be always stated as errors in star catalogs (Thank you so much, Arne). The policy to determine MISAO catalog errors is in principle, to pick up stars not detected at all during five or more nights and the magnitude recorded in star catalog is 1.0 mag or more brighter than the limiting magnitude. Here, the limiting magnitude is what output by the PIXY system, so it is usually about 1.5-2.0 mag brighter than the faintest magnitude of the image (the magnitude of the faintest star). Therefore, even if a star is actually a bit fainter, it cannot be selected by mistake as a MISAO catalog error when the magnitude difference is less than 2.5 mag. However, some stars can be selected by mistake as MISAO catalog errors in the following cases. Faint nebulae or clusters. In the MISAO Project, nebulae and clusters are removed by referring to such catalogs as NGC2000, IRAS PSC, etc. But there are many faint galaxies not listed in those catalogs. Because galaxies are recorded brighter in the GSC or USNO-A1.0 in general, they may be compiled as MISAO catalog errors by mistake. In addition, the magnitude estimation of nebulae and clusters by the PIXY system tends to become fainter than that of normal stars. So they may be judged as catalog errors more. Wavelength difference. Some stars become several magnitude fainter than the value recorded in star catalog. Variable stars. Since faint nebulae and clusters always appear fainter than recorded in star catalog, they are always output as candidates of catalog errors by the PIXY system. Therefore, the MISAO Project decides to compile such faint objects into MISAO faint objects catalog (MisF). In principle, when an object was not detected at all during five or more nights but exists as a very faint object actually, much fainter than recorded in star catalog, it will be registered as MisF object. Actually, among the MISAO catalog errors published in the announce mail on Mar. 5, MisE.UA1.00001 is a real object. It is very faint and cometary, so it should be a galaxy. I guess some of the MISAO catalog errors will be revealed as real objects after this. Then such an object will be registered as a MISAO faint object and the code of MisF object is inserted in the list of MISAO catalog errors. The list of MISAO faint objects are available at the URL: http://www.info.waseda.ac.jp/muraoka/members/seiichi/misao/public/MisF The MISAO faint objects registered hitherto are as follows. MisF -- Faint cometary objects discovered by the MISAO Project. ID R.A. Decl. Mag ------------------------------------ MisF00001 065826.60 +410846.3 17 MisF00002 063924.48 +474631.7 17 MisF00003 063517.84 +474914.0 16 MisF00004 062840.10 +480357.7 16 MisF00005 012113.39 +200905.7 15 MisF00006 012132.02 +195229.9 15 MisF00007 132151.60 -174014.9 17 MisF00008 004247.64 +404431.1 17 MisF00009 185840.78 +432806.6 17 MisF00010 165854.29 -174434.5 14 MisF00011 165853.82 -174434.4 14 By the way, 16 errors in the GSC and 19 errors in the USNO-A1.0 are discovered after the announce mail on Mar. 5. Dr. Arne Henden also pointed out that the R.A. and Decl. should be recorded in the list. So the recent list contains R.A. and Decl. of all objects. The lists of the MISAO catalog errors are available at the URL: http://www.info.waseda.ac.jp/muraoka/members/seiichi/misao/public/MisE.GSC http://www.info.waseda.ac.jp/muraoka/members/seiichi/misao/public/MisE.UA1 P.S. The past MISAO project announce mails are available at: http://www.info.waseda.ac.jp/muraoka/members/seiichi/misao/ -- Seiichi Yoshida Muraoka Lab., Waseda University, Japan seiichi@muraoka.info.waseda.ac.jp http://www.info.waseda.ac.jp/muraoka/members/seiichi/index.html