Information on the Saguaro Astronomy Club Database version 8.1

		dated March 22, 2010 

        	stevecoe at cloudynights dot com


This club project started many years ago, when we wanted a listing of the brightest deep sky objects on our computers with 64KB of memory on floppy disks.  Thinking it would be an easy task, here we are more than 25 years later, still  maintaining and updating a much larger listing of information about what to observe at the telescope.  How far we have come from the list of the brightest 300 objects contained within Burnham's Celestial Handbook, all typed in on my Apple II+.  Time flies.  As always, if you find an error, please let us know.

This ZIP file contains seven files:

This is the README.TXT file.

SACDOC.TXT is the documentation for the SAC database, there is much information here on the data fields and what the data means. Please spend some time reading this info before trying to utilize the  database, it will help you to use this data effectively.

REVHIST.TXT is the revision history, a short file about the various releases of the SAC database.

POTPOURRI.TXT is a set of information about a wide variety of astronomical phenomena from white dwarf stars, red stars, meteor showers, common names and more.  These are useful files, but they did not fit the information style of the main database.

SAC_DeepSky_81.XLS is version 8.1 of the SAC data as an Excel spreadsheet.  There are lots of possible ways to search and sort the data in this popular spreadsheet.    It contains information on over 10,000 deepsky objects. 

SAC_DeepSky_81_QCQ.TXT is version 8.1 of the Saguaro Astronomy Club database in quote, comma, quote delimited form.  This is also called CSV for comma separated variable.  Any modern database manager or spreadsheet will import the data in this format.

SAC_DeepSky_81_FENCE.TXT is version 8.1 of the SAC data as a text file that has vertical bars between the fields.  You can search and sort the data with a text editor.

SAC wishes to thank all the people who have spent many hours searching for, and correcting, errors in the NGC.  Their work is reflected in this release of the SAC database.  

A small fraction of the number of objects still persist as NONEXISTENT, compared  to the beginnings of this database.  Brian Skiff of Lowell Observatory has been a constant help with a variety of information about deep sky objects.  Stephen Michael Schimpf spent much time with the NOTES field, finding errors and trying to make the data more consistent.

Besides myself, I am going to list the dedicated group of people who have helped keep this an up to date and useful database:  Bill Anderson, A.J. Crayon, David Fredericksen, Jack Jones, Jay LeBlanc, Matt Lutinnen, Peter Argenziano, Paul Lind and Paul Dickson.    

Thank you to the skill, knowledge and expertise of all who helped the Saguaro Astronomy Club create this listing of what to observe in the deep sky.  

See the NOTE at the bottom of the Revision History, we will keep an updated errata file at the SAC web site from now on and allow users to update their version 8.1 files as needed.

Steve Coe
Database manager
Saguaro Astronomy Club