I have compiled an Excel list of possibly interesting stars for anyone doing photometry or spectroscopy. There are many stellar catalogs in different formats, such as those at the AAVSO and the Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg (SIMBAD, Vizier, etc.), which may be searched by different criteria. However, I wanted an Excel-type list in which I could see everything on one page, and sort the rows in several manners.
I shared the spreadsheet’s preliminary version, which contains 845 stars, with some friends and got positive feedback indicating that it might be useful to other people.
Well… things got more complex. I soon discovered that my star list needs occasional updating, as the databases from which I got the data evolve. Also, someone asked me to insert a column with the HD star numbering. Well, since there are 845 stars in my listing, this task alone is time-consuming. When doing it, I soon discovered that some stars’ spectral types had changed in the databases from where the data come from (AAVSO VSX, Simbad).
To solve the matter, I generated a Python code to connect my Excel file to the VSX and update my spreadsheet; this code still needs improving, testing, and implementation.
So, I wonder if someone in this group would like to look at the code and tell me if I am on the right track; better yet if someone finds what needs to be done to implement the code for the program to search VSX and update the spreadsheet at my command.
I would then share the star list (Excel file) and the initial Python code with anyone willing to take a quick look.
Hi there, I am not a Python user, but here is some information I discovered while searching some older blog posts. It is a URL that takes you to a list of stars in VSX, a very large list. I have not had time to delve more deeply into this facility but I did hit the SAVE button that appears above the entries and it caused a .csv file to download to my computer. The fields for this downloaded file are limited to [Name, AUID, Coords, Const, Type, Period, Mag] but there may be ways to coax more fields out of this operation. I don’t know. Anyway the .csv opened just fine in Numbers (a spreadsheet program that comes with the Mac) and in Excel. So, there may be ways to efficiently populate a spreadsheet or database ( I am using Claris Filemaker for a project similar to yours) … just by importing this .csv, not needing Python or programming at first at least.
I’ve edited @nerve3 post above because the link specified attempts to download the entire VSX archive in one go. Due to our recent addition of all of the variable stars found in GAIA DR3, this amounts to some 9 million rows or about 4.4 GB of data. As a small non-profit, the AAVSO does not have the resources to satisfy this type of request, so we mirror VSX in its entirety to Vizier on a weekly basis.
If your research requires the entity of VSX, please use this link instead:
Also, please note that we intend to deprecate the existing VSX API in Q1 2026. Please let us know if you have an application that depends on this API so we can add you to our developer list.
Brian
Edit: In light of the performance issues we’ve been experiencing. I’ll be patching VSX to prohibit this functionality later this evening.
