[acrosome]

Huh. Okay, I tried to reconcile the XHIP and RECONS100 datasets, and I've hit a snag. The galactic longitudes and latitudes don't match for objects that are in both sets. Dramatically. However, the conversions from HMS/DMS into decimal degrees for RA and DEC in the RECONS dataset do match. It's just the derived galactic latitudes and longitudes that don't.

The XHIP values for galactic latitude and longitude were in the dataset directly, whereas the RECONS ones were calculated using EvilDrGanymede's spreadsheet, so I'm inclined to believe the XHIP ones. But I'd really like to know why, since I'm going to make maps and this will result in the Astrosynthesis XYZ coming out different for the two sets. I could just derive the XYZ coordinates from RA and DEC, but then I loose the neat genre convention of defining directions as "coreward" or "spinward", "trailing", etc.

Are there different systems for calculating galactic longitude and latitude? It seems unlikely, but I had better ask.

EDIT-- Duh. I figured it out. The XHIP GLon is always a positive number up to 359.99999, whereas EDG's runs to positive 180 or negative 179.99999. To use EDG's spreadsheets to generate an XYZ I'll have to use his version, and derive the XHIP values.

Back to the salt mines.