TheBright Star Catalogue, also known as theYale Catalogue of Bright Stars,Yale Bright Star Catalogue, or justYBS, is astar catalogue that lists all stars ofstellar magnitude 6.5 or brighter, which is roughly every star visible to the naked eye from Earth. The catalog lists 9,110 objects, of which 9,095 are stars, 11 arenovae orsupernovae (which were "bright stars" only at the time when they were at their peak),[1] and four are non-stellar objects which are theglobular clusters47 Tucanae (designated HR 95) andNGC 2808 (HR 3671), and theopen clustersNGC 2281 (HR 2496) andMessier 67 (HR 3515).[2]
The catalogue is fixed in number of entries, but its data is maintained, and it is appended with a comments section about the objects that has been steadily enhanced. The abbreviation for the catalog as a whole isBS orYBS but all citations of stars it indexes useHR before the catalog number, a homage to the catalog's direct predecessor, published in 1908, named theHarvard Revised Photometry Catalogue.
The earliest predecessor of theYBSC, titledHarvard Photometry, was published in 1884 by theHarvard College Observatory under the supervision ofEdward Charles Pickering, and contained about 4,000 stars.[3] Following its release, Pickering promoted a broader stellar survey for the southern celestial hemisphere, equally as thorough as theHarvard Photometry of 1884. Thisphotometry work was carried out bySolon I. Bailey between 1889 and 1891, leading to the publication of theRevised Harvard Photometry in 1908. The new catalogue contained stars down tomagnitude 6.5 in both hemispheres, for whichJohn A. Parkhurst continued work through the 1920s.[4]
TheYale Bright Star Catalogue has been steadily enhanced since the Yale astronomerFrank Schlesinger published the first version in 1930; even though the YBS is limited to the 9110 objects already in the catalog, the data for the objects already listed is corrected and extended, and it is appended with a comments section about the objects. The edition of 1991 was the fifth in order, a version that introduced a considerable enhancement of the comments section, to a little more than the size of the catalogue itself. This most recent edition, in addition to several previous editions, was compiled and edited byEllen Dorrit Hoffleit ofYale University.[5][6]
The Harvard Revised Photometry, based on visual observations, has been superseded by photo-electric measurements using band pass filters, most prominently theUBV photometric system. This can differ substantially (up to 1.8 magnitudes[7]) from the older system. Hence many stars brighter than V=6.50 are not in the YBSC (and hundreds of stars in the YBSC are fainter than V=6.50). Dorrit Hoffleit with Michael Saladyga and Peter Wlasuk published in 1983 a Supplement with an additional 2603 stars for which a V magnitude of brighter than 7.10 had been measured at that time.
There have been one predecessor, and five editions of the YBS Catalog:
