HYG-Lite Star-Catalogue

06.12.2025 - 4:00 pm

HYG-Lite Tabelle

I have spent some time in the last few weeks looking for current star catalogues that contain positions, brightness, names, and other information from a sufficient number of stars.

It was not a short affair, as there is a bit of disorder on the Internet and there are many dead links that are quite frustrating.

In the end, I found an up-to-date version of the HYG-Catalogue with almost 120,000 entries, which I imported, modified and adapted for my purposes.

The result can be downloaded as a SQL import and in the form of Povray arrays:
Download - HYG-Lite Starcatalogue

In fact, I had had an old version of this catalogue in SQL format on my computer for over 20 years, of which I neither knew the name nor where I originally got it from.

I was able to work with it, but since it contains errors and some nearby objects are not listed, I wanted an up-to-date version. I tried to find the name on the internet, many annoying hours, but didn't find anything reasonable.

Until I came up with the idea of simply duckduckgoing the column names.

Search result from DuckDuckGo

First link, there I had it. The name HYG meant something to me right away, but I wouldn't have thought of it in my life.

The second link points to the most recent version I wanted to find. This also contains a few errors and e.g. Brown Dwarfs are not listed, of which there are several in our immediate neighborhood, but I will take care of them later.

Anyway, I have what I wanted, and the prepared result can be used.

Happy work,
Martin

Constellation Orion, rendered with Povray and the HYG-Lite star catalogue.

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