Where can I find a catalog for stars within 450 light-years of Earth? I'd prefer one that has approximated masses as well.
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
2
-
1$\begingroup$ I remember reading that there's 14,000 stars within 100 light years. Within 450 light years, 91 times the area, you could be looking at a million or so stars. Do you actually want a catalog with a million entries, cause that would be pretty cumbersome. $\endgroup$– userLTKCommented Jul 26, 2015 at 1:47
-
$\begingroup$ I like to mention NOMAD as often as possible, so here you go: usno.navy.mil/USNO/astrometry/optical-IR-prod/nomad $\endgroup$– user21Commented Jul 28, 2015 at 15:10
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
The Hipparcos catalogue (use the revision by van Leeuwen 2007) contains trigonometric parallaxes and is complete down to about 9th magnitude.
What this means is that you will have a complete set of measurements for F-type main sequence stars and hotter, and all giant stars within 450 light years. However, the sample will not be complete for G dwarfs or cooler, since these are fainter than 9th magnitude at 450 light years.
The catalogue does not contain mass, since mass is not a measurable quantity for single stars. If you want masses you will have to use relationships between absolute magnitude and mass for main sequence stars (e.g. Kroupa 2007), but note that these depend on metallicity and a little bit on stellar age. Masses are extremely difficult to estimate for giants.
If you can wait a couple of years, the Gaia mission will report parallax distances for all stars to magnitudes of 19 or 20. This will be almost complete at 450 light years, even for M dwarfs.
