Update star catalogs and cross-id with astroquery 0.4.9

[henrysky]

This PR updates the star catalogs generated with astroquery 0.4.9 released last month (see henrysky/stellarium_star_catalogs#2). Astroquery 0.4.9 has a better method to query binary star systems so components for HIP star systems should be more complete. The rest of the updated star catalogs are here: https://www.astro.utoronto.ca/~hleung/shared/stellarium_new_catalog/2025_feb_26/

cross-id.dat is generated as a part of the process to generate the star catalog now. Compared to the existing cross-id.dat, about additional 79 HIP id & 689 SAO id & 62206 HD id get cross-identifiers.

Fixes #4124

Also fixes a handful of stars with exactly 7.50 mag (e.g., SAO 145064) are missing from the current star catalogs.

Screenshots (if appropriate):

Type of change

• Bug fix (non-breaking change which fixes an issue)
• New feature (non-breaking change which adds functionality)
• Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing functionality to change)
• This change requires a documentation update
• Housekeeping

How Has This Been Tested?

Test Configuration:

• Operating system: MacOS 15
• Graphics Card: Apple M3

Checklist:

• My code follows the code style of this project.
• I have performed a self-review of my own code
• I have commented my code, particularly in hard-to-understand areas
• I have made corresponding changes to the documentation (header file)
• I have updated the respective chapter in the Stellarium User Guide
• My changes generate no new warnings
• I have added tests that prove my fix is effective or that my feature works
• New and existing unit tests pass locally with my changes
• Any dependent changes have been merged and published in downstream modules

[github-actions]

Great PR! Please pay attention to the following items before merging:

Files matching src/**/*.cpp:

• Are possibly unused includes removed?

Files matching guide/**:

• Did you remember to update screenshots to match new updates?
• Did you remember to grammar check in changed part of documentation?

This is an automatically generated QA checklist based on modified files.

[alex-w]

Thank you very much!

[10110111]

cross-id.dat is generated as a part of the process to generate the star catalog now.

Is there some script that does this based on the catalog files? Also, is it possible to switch to a binary format instead of the current textual one? It takes 550ms on my machine to load it, and most of the time is spent in parsing integers from string.

[henrysky]

Is there some script that does this based on the catalog files? Also, is it possible to switch to a binary format instead of the current textual one? It takes 550ms on my machine to load it, and most of the time is spent in parsing integers from string.

Not based on the catalog files (since the catalog files do not have SAO/HD/DR ids). Basically what happen is I query all possible HIP ids from SIMBAD, and then parse the result to build the catalog files, as well as the cross-id file. I can sure switch to a binary format.

[alex-w]

Also, is it possible to switch to a binary format instead of the current textual one? It takes 550ms on my machine to load it, and most of the time is spent in parsing integers from string.

I'll add patch to use packed version of cross-id data today

[alex-w]

Basically what happen is I query all possible HIP ids from SIMBAD, and then parse the result to build the catalog files, as well as the cross-id file. I can sure switch to a binary format.

Oops... I planned to packing data through command gzip -nc cross-id.dat > cross-id.cat and unpack it in the C++ code (similar to processing the gcvs.cat data at the moment). Do you want to use other way to create and use binary format for cross-id data?

[10110111]

Do you want to use other way to create and use binary format for cross-id data?

Of course, unpacking will only increase loading time :) My idea was to just have the numbers stored as normal little-endian 64-bit (or 32-bit when applicable) values and simply read them directly instead of parsing from string.

[github-actions]

Hello @henrysky!

Please check the fresh version (development snapshot) of Stellarium:
https://github.com/Stellarium/stellarium-data/releases/tag/weekly-snapshot

[github-actions]

Hello @henrysky!

Please check the latest stable version of Stellarium:
https://github.com/Stellarium/stellarium/releases/latest