Henry Draper Catalogue

The Henry Draper catalogue is an astronomical star catalogue. It was first published between 1918 and 1924.[1][2]

Classifications of stars

It gave spectroscopic classifications for more than 225,300 stars. The catalogue was later made bigger by the Henry Draper Extension (HDE) which gave clsssifications for 46,850 more stars. This extension was published between 1925 and 1936. Then the Henry Draper Extension Charts (HDEC) was published from 1937 to 1949 in the form of charts. It gave classifications for 86,933 more stars. In total, 359,083 stars were classified as of August 2017.[1][2]

Description

The Henry Draper catalogue (HD catalogue) is named after Henry Draper who was an amateur astronomer. The catalogue covers the whole night sky with some stars having apparent photographic magnitudes of around 9. The extensions added more fainter stars in some areas of the sky.[3] The catalogue was part of an innovative action to classify stellar spectra. The catalogue numbers are still commonly used as a way to identify stars.[4][5]

History

Origin

The Henry Draper Catalogue dates back to the first ever photographic studies of stellar spectra. Henry Draper made the first photograph of a star's spectrum showing visible spectral lines when he photographed Vega in 1872. Henry Draper took more than a hundred photographs of stellar spectra before his death in 1882. In 1885, Edward Pickering started to supervise photographic spectroscopy at Harvard College Observatory using the objective prism method. In 1886, Mary Anna Palmer Draper, who was Draper's widow, became interested in Pickering's research and agreed to give money for it under the name Henry Draper Memorial.[6][7] Pickering and his coworkers then started to take an objective prism survey of the sky to classify the stellar spectra.[8]

Work

Classifications in the Draper Catalogue of Stellar Spectra[9]
SecchiDraperComment
I A, B, C, D Hydrogen lines visible.
II E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L
III M
IV NDid not appear in the catalogue.
— OWolf–Rayet spectra with bright lines.
— PPlanetary nebulae.
— QOther spectra.

A first result of this work was the Draper Catalogue of Stellar Spectra. This work was published in 1890 and contained spectroscopic classifications for 10,351 stars. Most of the stars were north of declination –25° and were classified by Williamina Fleming.[10] The classification scheme was used to further split the Secchi classes (I to IV), that were used before, into more specific classes with letters A to N.

Classifications with letters

The letter O was used for stars whose spectra had mostly bright lines.

The letter P was used for planetary nebulae, and the letter Q was used for spectra which did not fit into any of the other classes from A to P.

There were no N type stars in the catalogue. The only star of type O was the Wolf-Rayet star HR 2583.[9]

More studies

In 1897, Antonia Maury and Pickering published a more detailed study of the spectra of bright stars in the northern hemisphere.[11]

Maury used classifications from number I to XXII. The classification groups from I to XX matched with the Draper Catalogue types B, A, F, G, K and M while XXI and XXII matched the Draper Catalogue types N and O.[12]

Construction of the Boyden Observatory

The Harvard College Observatory built the Boyden Observatory in Arequipa, Peru in the year 1890. The Boyden Observatory was made to study the sky in the southern hemisphere. In 1901, a study of bright stars in the southern hemisphere was published by Annie Jump Cannon and Pickering.[13][14]

Cannon used the letter types of the Draper Catalogue of Stellar Spectra but used the letters, O, B, A, F, G, K and M only (used in that order). Letters P for planetary nebula and Q and different spectra were also used but all other letters were removed.

Cannon also used types like B5A for stars that were halfway between types B and A. She used F2G for stars one-fifth of the way between F to G and more.[15]

Creation of Henry Draper Catalogue

New discoveries increased inerests in stellar classification between 1910 and 1915. The Henry Draper Catalogue was started to be worked on in 1911.

Cannon and her coworkers classified about 5000 spectra per month.[16] The Henry Draper Catalogue was published in 9 volumes of the Annals of Harvard College Observatory. The catalogue had rough positions, spectral classifications, magnitudes, and cross-referenves to the Durchmusterung catalogs for 225,300 stars where possible.[17]

The classification scheme that was used was similar to the one used in Cannon's 1901 work. The only difference was that the types such as B, A, B5A, F2G and more, were changed to B0, A0, B5 AND F2 and more.

In the classes O through M, P was used for nebulae and R and N were used for carbon stars.[18]

Death of Edward Pickering

Pickering died on February 3, 1919 and left 6 volumes to be supervised by Cannon.[19] Cannon found spectral classifications for 46,850 fainter stars in specific areas of the sky in the Henry Draper Extension. The extension was published in 6 parts between 1925 and 1936.[2][20]

Cannon continued classifying stars until her death in 1941. Most of these classifications were published in the Henry Draper Extension Charts (the first part of the charts was published in 1937) in 1949. These charts also had some classifications by Margaret Walton Mayali, who supervised the work after Cannon's death.[21][22]

The catalogue and its extensions

The catalogue and its extensions were the first large-scale try to catalogue spectral types of stars.[5] The creation of the catalogue led to the Harvard classification scheme of stellar spectra which is still used to this day.[23]

Availability and Usage

Usage

Stars that are in the main part of the catalogue are of medium magnitude. The faintest stars in the main part are about 9m.

The extensions have stars which are as faint as the 11th magnitude taken from certain areas of the sky.[3][24]

The stars in the original catalogue are HD 1 to HD 225300. They are numbered in the order of increasing right ascension for epoch 1900.0. Stars in the first extension are HDE 225301 to HDE 272150. Stars in the extension charts are HDEC 272151 to HDEC 359083. But since the numbers continue through the original catalog and its extensions, it does not matter if HD is used instead of HDE or HDEC.[25] Many stars are identified by their HD numbers.[4]

Availability

The Henry Draper Catalogue and its Extensions were available from the NASA Astronomical Data Center.[26]

Now, the Catalogue and the Extensions are available from the VizieR service of the Centre de Données astronomiques (meaning Astronomical Data Center in French) at Strasbourg as catalogue number III/135A.[27]

Because of the catalogue's format, putting the Henry Draper Extension Charts into a format that could be read by machines was more harder, but this task was soon completed by Nesterov, Röser and their coworkers by 1995. The charts are now available at VizieR as catalogue number III/182.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Nesterov, V. V.; Kuzmin, A. V.; Ashimbaeva, N. T.; Volchkov, A. A.; Röser, S.; Bastian, U. (1995). "The Henry Draper Extension Charts: A catalogue of accurate positions, proper motions, magnitudes and spectral types of 86933 stars". Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement Series. 110: 367. Bibcode:1995A&AS..110..367N. CDS ID III/182.
  2. 1 2 3 Cannon, Annie. J. (1936). "The Henry Draper extension". Annals of Harvard College Observatory. 100: 1. Bibcode:1936AnHar.100....1C.
  3. 1 2 "HD (S0): HENRY DRAPER star catalog, edition 1985 (19930406)". HyperSky. Willmann-Bell, Inc. 1996. Archived from the original on May 9, 2008.
  4. 1 2 Webb, Stephen (1999). Measuring the Universe: The Cosmological Distance Ladder. Springer. p. 327. ISBN 978-1-85233-106-1.
  5. 1 2 Sparke, Linda S.; Gallagher, John S. III (2007). Galaxies in the Universe: An Introduction (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-521-85593-8.
  6. ↑ Barker, George F. (1887). "On the Henry Draper Memorial Photographs of Stellar Spectra". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 24: 166–172.
  7. ↑ Ogilvie, Marilyn Bailey (1986). Women in Science: Antiquity Through the Nineteenth Century: a Biographical Dictionary with Annotated Bibliography. MIT Press. p. 75. ISBN 978-0-262-65038-0.
  8. ↑ Cannon, Annie J. (1915). "The Henry Draper Memorial". Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. 9: 203. Bibcode:1915JRASC...9..203C.
  9. 1 2 Hearnshaw 1986, p. 108; Pickering 1890, pp. 2–4
  10. ↑ Pickering, Edward C. (1890). "The Draper Catalogue of stellar spectra photographed with the 8-inch Bache telescope as a part of the Henry Draper memorial". Annals of Harvard College Observatory. 27: 1–388. Bibcode:1890AnHar..27....1P. See in particular pp. 1–2.
  11. ↑ Maury, Antonia C.; Pickering, Edward C. (1897). "Spectra of bright stars photographed with the 11-inch Draper Telescope as part of the Henry Draper Memorial". Annals of Harvard College Observatory. 28: 1. Bibcode:1897AnHar..28....1M.
  12. ↑ Maury & Pickering 1897, Table I</ref Maury was the first to place B type stars in their current positions, after A type stars, in the spectral classification.<ref>Hearnshaw 1986, p. 112
  13. ↑ Cannon, Annie J.; Pickering, Edward C. (1901). "Spectra of bright southern stars photographed with the 13-inch Boyden telescope as part of the Henry Draper Memorial". Annals of Harvard College Observatory. 28: 129. Bibcode:1901AnHar..28..129C.
  14. ↑ Hearnshaw 1986, pp. 110–111, 117–118
  15. ↑ Hearnshaw 1986, pp. 117–119
  16. ↑ Cannon 1915, pp. 214–215
  17. ↑ Cannon, Annie J.; Pickering, Edward C. (1918). "The Henry Draper Catalogue". Annals of Harvard College Observatory.;
    hours 0 to 3, 91 (1918), Template:Bibcode;
    hours 4 to 6, 92 (1918), Template:Bibcode;
    hours 7 to 8, 93 (1919), Template:Bibcode;
    hours 9 to 11, 94 (1919), Template:Bibcode;
    hours 12 to 14, 95 (1920), Template:Bibcode;
    hours 15 to 16, 96 (1921), Template:Bibcode;
    hours 17 to 18, 97 (1922), Template:Bibcode;
    hours 19 to 20, 98 (1923), Template:Bibcode;
    hours 21 to 23, 99 (1924), Template:Bibcode.
  18. ↑ Hearnshaw 1986, pp. 121–122, 128, 133–134; also see Cannon & Pickering 1918, vol. 1, pp. 5–11
  19. ↑ Hearnshaw, J. B. (1986). The Analysis of Starlight: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Astronomical Spectroscopy. Cambridge University Press. p. 135. ISBN 978-0-521-25548-6.
  20. ↑ Cannon, Annie Jump; Shapley, Harlow (1937). "The Henry Draper charts of stellar spectra". Annals of Harvard College Observatory. 105 (1): 1. Bibcode:1937AnHar.105....1C.
  21. ↑ Cannon & Shapley 1937; Hearnshaw 1986, p. 138
  22. ↑ Cannon, Annie J.; Mayall, Margaret Walton (1949). "The Henry Draper extension. II". Annals of Harvard College Observatory. 112: 1. Bibcode:1949AnHar.112....1C.
  23. ↑ Schulz, Norbert S. (2005). From Dust to Stars: Studies of the Formation and Early Evolution of Stars. Springer. p. 13. ISBN 978-3-540-23711-2.
  24. ↑ Annie Jump Cannon, article, Encyclopædia Britannica Online, accessed September 12, 2008.
  25. ↑ See p. 2, Cannon and Shapley 1937 and p. 369, Nesterov et al. 1995.
  26. ↑ Astronomical Data Center CD-ROM: Selected Astronomical Catalogs, Volume 3 Archived 2008-09-16 at the Wayback Machine, Astronomical Data Center, NASA. Accessed on line September 11, 2008.
  27. ↑ Henry Draper Catalogue and Extension, A. J. Cannon and E. C. Pickering, CDS ID III/135A.
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