| Alternative names | SAO |
|---|---|
TheSmithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Star Catalog is anastrometricstar catalogue, created bySmithsonian Institution, aresearch institute. It was published by theSmithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in 1966 and contains 258,997 stars.[1][2][3][4] The catalogue wascompiled from various previous astrometric catalogues, and contains only stars to about ninthmagnitude for which accurate proper motions were known. Names in the SAO catalogue start with the letters SAO, followed by a number. The numbers are assigned following 18 ten-degree bands ofdeclination, with stars sorted byright ascension within each band.
Online version of the SAO Catalog was created by theHEASARC in March 2001 based on ADC/CDS Catalog I/131A, which itself is originally derived from a character-coded machine-readable version of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Star Catalog (SAO, SAO Staff 1966) prepared by T.A. Nagy in 1979, and subsequently modified over the next decade or so.[5]
 | Thisastronomical catalog article is astub. You can help Wikipedia byexpanding it. |