NFinder Database Project

The certain identification of a nearby star against a crowded background field may be complicated by two things:

• The star may be as faint or fainter than background stars, since most are intrinsically faint M Dwarfs
• The star may have high proper motion, so its coordinates must continually be updated.

The NFinder Project is a subsidiary NStars project to update all coordinates for nearby stars by manual inspection of 2MASS and DSS images, together with 2MASS PSC and USNO-B or GSC2 catalogue comparisons. In addition, finder charts are being composed that identify the star on an optical image labeled with star coordinates, epoch of observations, and mean annual proper motions. The NFinder Database is being assembled to make retrieval of all this information convenient and useable for other observational or database research tasks.

The project is being carried out primarily by undergraduate students in the Physics and Astronomy Department, together with members of the Astrobiology Club. A great deal of this work was done by students at GSU, but 2MASS "refined" their coordinates in a later release, so it must be redone.

NFinder Resources:

• NFinder Database
• NFinder Database Status Statistics
• NFinder Update Cookbook
• Finder Chart Cookbook
• NFinder Inspection Cookbook

Additional NFinder Tools

• Create a Finder Chart
• Proper Motion Translation
• Julian Date to Epoch Conversion