On 12Feb2018 2002, Caleuche wrote:
> I'm sure it could have been done - the catalogues already existed and
> they did publish right ascension, declination, proper motion, RV
> spectrometer and parallax data. The problem was those catalogues were
> not in machine readable form and you do have to do (not much but
> some) math for each star to get its {x,y,z} and {x',y',z'}
> coordinates. So while it could have been done, the task would have
> been painful, error prone and enormous. Just having the data in
> machine readable form would have made the task doable, but I suspect
> it probably wasn't. (possibly a good reason to have taken a local
> university astronomy class).

I was high-school age at the time, and the catalogues I recall having
access to didn't have parallax data. Without that the only distances I
could get were by apparent magnitude vs. expected absolute magnitude
(based on the star's spectral type), and that's pretty rough.

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
Chief Assistant to the Assistant Chief