The Hipparcos Space Astrometry Mission: The Hipparcos and Tycho Catalogues: The Hipparcos Java Package

The Hipparcos Java Package

The Hipparcos Java Package (version 1) is available from ftp://ftp.rssd.esa.int/pub/hipparcos/tools/. There are two jar files to retrieve: hipparcos.jar or hipparcossrc.jar

hipparcos.jar is the "bare essentials" package which contains all the java class files required to run the applications described below. hipparcossrc.jar contains these class files plus the original java files and some java documentation. This package is more appropriate for users who want to delve into the source code and who are familiar with the java language.

This package has been designed to run either

externally - over the web (accessing the Hipparcos and Tycho Catalogues at www.rssd.esa.int)
or
locally - using the Hipparcos and Tycho Catalogues on your local disk with some additional files and routines in C. The catalogues are available on CDROM (as Volume 17 of the Hipparcos and Tycho Catalogues - see http://www.rssd.esa.int/Hipparcos/hipp_subs.html for details on how to order) or by ftp from SIMBAD (http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/Cat?I/239).

You must also have jdk (version 1.2 or higher) for most of the applications and Java 3D API and OpenGL libraries for the 3D Viewer. (Details of how to obtain and install these libraries are available on the Sun web site.)

See the README.hipparcos file for details about how to retrieve and install the package.

APPLICATIONS

The following java applications are available in the Hipparcos Java Package. Click on each thumbnail for a full-scale image of the application.

Show Sky

This plots the "Hipparcos and Tycho Sky" for a user defined region. In addition the sky view can then be animated to show the changing appearance of the sky over time due to the proper motion of the stars.
The user selects the center of the field of view and the field width (up to 35 degrees). A limiting magnitude can be set using the V(lim) selection. By clicking on any star and then selecting the "Get Info" button, the catalogue entries for that star will be returned in a browser window. A list of all the stars in the field and some summary data from the Catalogues can be obtained with the "List" button. The star field can also be animated to show the effects of the measured Hipparcos proper motions. The step size for each increment in time can be varied and the stars can be plotted with tails (to illustrate the positional shift with time) or without tails (giving an instantaneous sky plot for the epoch).

3D viewer

The Hipparcos 3d Viewer is a java application which plots the three dimensional positions (ra, dec and distance) of stars using data from the Hipparcos Catalogue.

The application uses the Hipparcos parallax to determine the distance of each star. The stars in a user selected volume of space are colour-coded using the B-V colour from the Hipparcos catalogue. The size of a star is proportional to the absolute magnitude.

Once a field has been plotted it is then possible to identify individual stars (by clicking on them) and to retrieve the Hipparcos Catalogue data for the selected star. It is also possible to rotate the field around each of the 3 axes and to zoom in and out of the field, allowing the user to view the relative locations of the stars in some detail. All of the stars in the field can be listed, along with some summary data from the Hipparcos Catalogue, using the "List" button.

Light Curves

This application allows you to plot the light curve for any given Hipparcos star. The light curve is initially plotted with the best fit parameters from the catalogues. There is an option in the user interface to change the period of the plot. It is also possible to scan through the Catalogue using the "prev" and "next" buttons. This application can be adapted to include data obtained by other telescopes. Details on how this may be done is given in the README.curve file.

Intermediate Data
This application plots barycentric and observed positions (with error bars) for a requested star using The Hipparcos Intermediate Astrometric Data. Some statistical charts are also generated for the data. More detailed information on this application is available here.