This program is a simple interface to allow extracting sub-sections of the USNO A2.0 catalog. The program has been compiled to run under a few different operating systems, Linux (x86), Solaris (Sparc), Solaris (x86).
To use these programs, copy the relevant executable to a directory that is in your search path. Then, set the environment variable USNO_CAT to point to the location of the catalog (yes, it must all be in the same directory).
For example (csh or tcsh users):
setenv USNO_CAT /info/catalog/USNO-A2.0
This program is designed to work with Marc Buie's IDL library (refnet.pro) and is not really intended for use directly. Nonetheless, here are the recognized command line arguments:
refnet: -ra HH:MM:SS.s Right ascension (J2000) of center of search region -dec DD:MM:SS Declination (J2000) of center of search region -h X Height of search region in arc-seconds -w X Width of search region in arc-seconds -r X Limiting Red magnitude for search (def=30) -b X Limiting Blue magnitude for search (def=30)The list of stars is written on standard output. If you run it with no arguments there is a default position and width. For testing, you can run it and compare to the following (the first 10 stars from this default query):
23 45 00.1 +06 48 17 15.2 16.4 584 0 23 45 00.2 +06 26 38 16.0 17.9 584 0 23 45 00.2 +05 14 31 17.3 19.5 584 0 23 45 00.2 +05 28 11 19.0 19.1 584 0 23 45 00.2 +05 49 00 15.2 16.2 584 0 23 45 00.3 +06 23 47 15.6 16.5 584 0 23 45 00.3 +04 48 25 18.8 19.2 584 0 23 45 00.3 +04 49 34 15.6 16.2 584 0 23 45 00.4 +06 48 29 16.3 17.5 584 0 23 45 00.4 +06 41 41 17.5 18.3 584 0The fields are RA (3 columns), Dec (3 columns), Red mag, Blue mag, zone #, and magnitude error flag (1 means it's worse than usual).