Widely referenced, comprehensive star catalog?

[TechBear_Seattle]

I am working at being an author again, so please bear with me. :hi:

In a bit more than a hundred years, humanity will take its first tentative steps to the stars. With that will come the need for a comprehensive, open ended catalog of stellar objects, compiled and maintained by the Institute for Scientific Research and Exploration (ISRE, pronounced EYE-sree.) Every star would be uniquely identified by an ICS (Institute Catalog of Stars) index. I would like to base it on an existing catalog if possible, so as to minimize confusion with historical records.

I am thinking of using the Gliese-Jahreiß, which lists all the stars within 25 parsecs ordered by right ascension. Stars with integer indexes would be denoted just by a change of prefix, so Gl 506 (61 Virginis) would become ICS 506. Stars with decimal indexes (given so that newly discovered stars could be inserted while retaining the desired ordering) would be given new integer indexes and placed, in order, after the others. After that, other catalogs were raided for information, with entries indexed roughly by distance. Once the initial catalog was completed, new entries were added serially, regardless of distance, spectral class or other classification.

Does this sound reasonable? Is there a different catalog that you think this list should be initially based upon? Or should I just throw away all past catalogs and come up with one from scratch?

[LearnedHand]

1. sloan digital survey? (link)

http://www.sdss.org/

Edited toadd link.

[bananas]

2. Try these

http://www.geekstir.com/map-of-the-entire-star-trek-universe
http://www.ucip.org/science/newmaps/

[BadgerKid]

3. Maybe the NGC can help?

http://seds.org/~spider/ngc/ngc.html

:hi:

[pokerfan]

4. Isn't the NGC a deep sky catalog?

The OP is looking for a stellar catalog.

[Bill McBlueState]

5. Gliese is excellent if you're okay with the 25-parsec limit

Otherwise, the Hipparcos catalog is a good one.

[TechBear_Seattle]

6. I might go with Hipparcos then

My reasoning for Gliese was that it seemed to be the most commonly used index. Also, we have only gone out about 90 light years, so most everything we've studied up close would be listed in that catalog anyway. Hipparcos looks good, though. Thanks for the reference.