The Gliese Catalogue of Nearby Stars is a frequently referenced, modern star catalogue of stars located within 25 parsecs of the Earth.
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In 1957 German astronomer Wilhelm Gliese published his first star catalogue of nearly one thousand stars located within 20 parsecs of Earth, listing their known properties and ordered by right ascension.[1]Items from the first catalogue were designated GL NNN and the stars were numbered from 1-915.[2]
He published a significant update to his original catalogue as the Catalogue of Nearby Stars in 1969, extending the range out to 22 parsecs.[2]. The update extended the list to 1,529 stars, and the stars were then designated Gl NNN.NA and numbered from 1.0 to 915.0. New stars not in the original Gliese catalogue were given fractional numbers to slot them 'between' existing Gliese stars to retain the existing right ascension order.
A supplement to the catalogue, published in 1970 by Richard van der Riet Woolley and associates, extended the range out to 25 parsecs. This supplement added catalogue numbers in the range 9001–9850 using the now deprecated Wo prefix. Stars in this range now also use the GJ prefix.[3]
Gliese published an extension to the second edition of the catalogue in 1979 in collaboration with Hartmut Jahreiß. The combined catalogue is now commonly referred to as the Gliese-Jahreiß (GJ) catalog.[4] This catalogue was published with two tables: Table 1 uses the designations GJ NNNN for entries numbered 1000-1294 for confirmed nearby stars; Table 2 uses the designations GJ NNNN for entries numbered 2001-2159 for suspected nearby stars.[5] Since the publication of this catalogue all of the stars in the combined catalogue and succeeding supplements are designated by the preferred GJ prefix.
Gliese published the Third Catalogue of Nearby Stars (CNS3) in 1991, again in collaboration with Hartmut Jahreiß; the list now containing information on more than 3,800 stars. Although this catalogue is designated as preliminary it is still the one in current use. [6] This catalogue lists a total of 3,803 stars. Most of these stars already had GJ numbers, but there were also 1,388 stars which were not numbered. As no final version has been forthcoming, the need to give these 1,388 some name has resulted in them being numbered 3001–4388 (NN numbers, for "no name"), and data files of this catalogue now usually include these numbers. An example of a star which is often referred to by one of these unofficial GJ numbers is GJ 3021.
An updated, online-only version of the Catalogue of Nearby Stars made by Hartmut Jahreiß in 1998 is available from the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut, Heidelberg as ARICNS.
The releases of the different versions of this catalogue over the years also documents the progression of publication from the printed form of the earlier catalogues to publication in electronic form of the later catalogues, as is now the case with most other large catalogues.
Some stars are best known by the original catalogue number, such as Gliese 581 and Gliese 710. The Gliese catalogue stars are frequent targets of study due to their proximity to Earth.
In 2010 J. Stauffer, A. Tanner, et. al. released an update to most stars in the Gliese, Gliese and Jahreiss, and Woolley catalogs of nearby stars.[7] They provide revised J2000, epoch 2000 coordinates cross-matched with 2MASS sources where possible.