MICA 1.x Catalog Fields

The format for MICA 1.x catalogs was the same for those catalogs supplied with the program as those created by the user. Refer to Chapter 5 of the MICA 1.x documentation for specific information regarding catalogs supplied with previous versions of MICA. Detailed field descriptions and formats for user-created catalogs are listed below.

Creating Your Own Catalog

You may create your own catalogs for use with MICA. In order to do this, you must format your data so that MICA can access it properly, then import the catalog into the MICA 2.0 binary format (see the File menu). You can construct your catalog using a text editor, another program, or any other method of your choice. Your catalog must be formatted, that is, composed of character data, with one record of 96 characters for each object in the catalog. The order of records (objects) is not important, but each record in the file must be set up according to these specifications:

• all positions and proper motions must be referred to the mean equator, equinox, and epoch of J2000.0;
• each record in the catalog file must be 96 characters in length;
• only alphanumeric ASCII characters are allowed in the catalog records; no special characters such as tabs are permitted; and
• the data in the records must be organized according to the format given in the following table. The "Field Format" column provides the format specification in FORTRAN FORMAT syntax.

Field Position	Field Format	Contents	Units	Example
1 - 8	A8	Name 1, left justified	-----	ALP2 LIB
9 - 16	A8	Name 2, left justified	-----	ZUBENELG
17 - 24	A8	Name 3, left justified	-----	-15 3996
25 - 38	F14.10	Right Ascension at J2000.0	decimal hours	14.8479756946
39 - 52	F14.10	Declination at J2000.0	decimal degrees	-16.0418025010
53 - 62	F10.4	Proper Motion in R. A. at J2000.0	seconds/Julian century	-0.7350
63 - 72	F10.4	Proper Motion in Dec. at J2000.0	arcseconds/Julian century	-6.8310
73 - 80	F8.4	Parallax	arcseconds	0.0490
81 - 88	F8.2	Radial Velocity	kilometers/second	-10.00
89 - 96	F8.4	Visual Magnitude (or Flux)	magnitude (or Jansky)	2.900

Depending upon the type of object listed in the catalog, some fields may contain zeroes or blanks, but no tabs. Records filled entirely with blanks and/or zeroes are not permitted. The ASCII catalog file must have a file name extension of .CAT, and must be imported into the MICA 2.0 format using the Import MICA 1.x Catalog feature on the File menu.

Failure to follow the specifications given above can lead to erroneous results from MICA!

For information on converting older catalog data to the J2000.0 system used in MICA, see Smith, et al. (1989) and Yallop, et al. (1989).