NPC, A New Combined Position Catalogue of Stars in the Northern Pole Region

Abstract

The main task of this work was to construct a new catalogue of positions and proper motions of stars in the north polar cap, and using the results obtained to study the systematic features of the source catalogues as well as the reference system in the polar region. To achieve the goal, thirteen source catalogues, both meridian and photographic, covering an epoch span near one and a half century, were collected. Most of them were not involved in the process of both the PPM and the ACRS constructions. The new combined catalogue of positions and proper motions, named North Polar Catalogue (NPC), lists 4272 stars on the FK5 system, J2000.0. The catalogue was constructed using the method of infinitely overlapping circles. It represents the second use of this procedure to construct a star catalogue. External rms accuracy of positions for the epoch of 2000 is equal to 0″15 and 0″25 for the centennial proper motions, respectively. The internal rms errors of positions at the mean catalogue epoch, near 1940, are equal to 0″18 and 0″15 for right ascension and declination correspondingly, while external rms position errors for that epoch are of the order of 0″05. Comparisons were made between the NPC and three modern catalogues, the FK5, PPM, and ACRS. The systematic differences between the new catalogue and PPM one for the epoch of 2000 are valuable, especially in the case of errors depending on right ascension. The authors consider as an essential part of the systematic differences that, which is caused by some shortcomings of the PPM in the polar zone. For the mean epoch of the new catalogue positions the systematic differences are smaller.