Data Structure and Software of the UCAC-S Project

N. Zacharias, M.I. Zacharias

US Naval Observatory, Washington DC, USA; and Universities Research Association, USRA

Abstract. The USNO CCD Astrograph Catalog South (UCAC-S) project is a high precision astrometric survey of the entire southern hemisphere for the 7-16 magnitude range, aiming at an accuracy of 20 mas for 8-14 mag stars. A 4kx4k CCD is used at the back-end of a 5-element, 0.2 meter aperture astrograph. A 2-fold overlap pattern of 43,839 fields will produce 1.8 terabytes of compressed raw data, stored on tapes and CD-ROMs. The project started in January 1998 at CTIO and is scheduled for 2 years to complete. Customized Fortran routines are used throughout. The data structure, quality control procedures and software layout are described.

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