<p>As you’ve discovered, there are a lot of different catalogs out there, and many ways to search them.  It would help if you could narrow your question a bit - what kind of data are you looking for?   You seem to want stellar masses at least - what else?  As noted above, there are few stars for which mass is measured directly, but there are robust ways of estimating it from other information, just as effective temperature can be determined from spectral type or photometry.</p>
<p>One catalog that might meet your needs is the <a href="https://tess.mit.edu/science/tess-input-catalogue/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">TESS Input Catalog (TIC)</a> or its brighter subset, the TESS Candidate Target List.  It compiles information from a lot of other sources, and includes magnitudes from optical through infrared, as well as estimates of stellar mass, radius, temperature, metallicity, luminosity, and surface gravity.  It also includes stellar parallax (i.e., distance) and proper motion from Gaia.</p>
<p>In addition to the ways of searching given in the above link, you can search it through Vizier <a href="http://vizier.hia.nrc.ca/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=IV/38&amp;-to=3" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a> - I find the Vizier interface a little easier to navigate than MAST, though both have a lot of options.</p>
<p>Now this catalog may be overkill for what you want: <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/aad050#ajaad050s4" rel="nofollow noreferrer">it has 471 million stars</a>, though “only” 27 million of those have mass estimates, and “only” 2 million have distances.    :-)  So knowing more about what you want could help narrow things down.</p>
<p>Edit: The above numbers refer to an earlier release of the catalog, prior to Gaia DR2.  The updated version (which is what I linked to from Vizier) has about 1.7 billion stars, of which 1.27 billion have distances and 455 million have mass estimates.</p>
<p>Edit 2:  After clarification in the comments that the goal is finding information only for very bright stars, this isn’t the best catalog to use.  While it does include entries for some bright stars (e.g. Vega, Betelgeuse), the information included is very limited, presumably because they are saturated (overexposed) in most surveys.</p>
<p>In general it is much harder to get <em>homogeneous</em> data for very bright stars because of this.  There is a wealth of data on them individually, but because they are saturated in systematic surveys, there aren’t uniform sources of data on them to which known relations can be applied in bulk.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_Star_Catalogue" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Yale Bright Star Catalogue</a> (searchable <a href="https://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-3?-source=V/50/catalog" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>) is a good source of basic data (photometry, spectral type, distance, multiplicity), but for derived quantities like mass or radius you would have to apply known relationships yourself (if you need the data in bulk) or go to individual references for particular stars if you don’t need a lot of them. Honestly Wikipedia isn’t a bad starting point in the latter case - it is generally clear about what references the numbers come from.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-25T07:02:09.293Z
Can you revise the summary of the catalog contents to match the updated TIC catalog that you are discussing. In particular, there are something like half a *billion* mass and radius estimates and a billion stars with parallax-based distances. The paper to refer to is https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.10694
ProfRob
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-25T10:29:53.880Z
Thanks for your reply. I'm looking for all kinds of measurements including mass, radius, temperature, luminosity, rotational velocity and distance (preferably calculated from Gaia). I've been making do with the CDS portal, but I've hit a road block when it comes to multiple star systems in that either the parameters of only one star get reported (and it's completely unclear which component is being referred to), or the whole system is treated is one star for some bizarre reason (although I understand this can be unavoidable for spectroscopic binaries). Does the TESS catalog remedy this?
Will
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-25T10:43:59.803Z
Also: I'm only interested in stars brighter than magnitude +4.00 at the moment. What difference does it make if a choose the "brighter subset" CTL over the TIC? If it only means I see fewer dim stars in the search, then that's fine, but if it affects the data of the target, then that would not be ideal.
Will
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-25T11:01:32.497Z
@Will It maybe that multiple systems are unresolved and that the parameters are not available for the two stars separately. You really do have to understand the data and catalogues that you are using and be prepared to a bt of work to clean it in the bespoke way that you appear to require. The properties of the TIC/CTL catalogs are described in the link in my comment above.
ProfRob
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-25T11:17:59.310Z
Update: when I entered the target Alpha Lupi into both CTL and TIC, it gave me data for everything but the object I was interested in. Why  isn't there data on the target star?
Will
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-25T11:31:39.130Z
To answer my own question, presumably that's because TESS only searches for stars with possible transiting exoplanets. Could you point me to a catalog which shows data for brighter stars, regardless of whether they have transiting exoplanets?
Will
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-25T12:19:02.620Z
@RobJeffries Edited, thanks for catching that.  I should have noticed from the smaller number of parallaxes.
Eric Jensen
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-25T12:54:04.567Z
@Will  I’ve updated my answer to include some discussion of issues with bright stars and a possible data source to look at.
Eric Jensen
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-25T13:54:46.887Z
Thank you for your edits, they've been very helpful. Unfortunately, the lack of homogenized data on bright stars is very disappointing to me, as I'm now left with data of varying age, quality, sensitivity, completeness, etc. which cannot be properly compared with other data within a reasonable time frame. One day there might be a nice consistent set of homogenized data that I can intuitively rely on, but until then, I'll have to give up on this pointless hobby.
Will
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-25T14:53:19.960Z
@Will well quite - doing astronomy/astrophysics isn't a hobby and in the end you have to know what you are doing and be prepared to read some papers. The Yale bright star catalogue is perfectly homogeneous in terms of the measurements it lists for bright stars. The Hipparcos catalogue is pretty good in that respect too (and has parallaxes) What it doesn't do is give you age, mass and radius, because NONE of those things are directly measurable. Another one to look at (for a hobbyist) is the HYG database https://astronexus.com/hyg
ProfRob
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-25T15:22:47.613Z
Thanks, Rob. My 'hobby' specifically was effectively a third attempt at a bright star spreadsheet (although technically a wiki this time), but that now isn't possible because the data I want doesn't exist in the way I want it. I've read papers before and I know roughly how to extract the correct information - but it's just too time consuming. That's why the NASA Exoplanet Catalog was perfect for spread-sheeting exoplanets - homogenized data arranged into neat tables (easy to cross-examine), with clear references to their sources and the objects themselves.
Will
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-25T15:37:04.307Z
@Will the Exoplanet catalog gives you a spreadsheet. You don't have to do anything. The point is that most of those parameters are *measured* for exoplanetary systems. They are not (and cannot be) for bog-standard single field stars. The HYG sounds perfect for your purposes, but *you* will need to infer masses and radii (you won't be able to estimate ages very well) in the way that you see fit.
ProfRob
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-25T21:15:21.300Z
I'll certainly have a try with the HYG database. I can probably find out elsewhere, but I'm not familiar with how to use ".csv.gz" files. Can I import it into Excel or is it designed for Vizier? 

Presumably by "infer masses and radii" you mean use a function to calculate the estimated value? I haven't tried that before. Do you have a particular formula to recommend because there are, to me knowledge, various ones to do similar things.
Will
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-26T03:46:49.590Z
.gz is for gzip compression (similar to .zip).  Once you uncompress, the resulting .csv (comma-separated variable) file can be imported directly by Excel.
Eric Jensen
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-26T15:20:51.243Z
I've tried to look at various stars and I'm finding that the database just isn't handling multiple star systems adequately. For instance Alpha Andromedae only has one star according to HYG when it's a binary system.
Will
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-25T00:52:22.327Z
2020-09-25T12:53:05.183Z
2020-09-25T12:53:05.183Z
Eric Jensen
<p>I'm looking for some kind of catalog/repository which lists stellar parameters (e.g. mass, radius, temperature) in a similar vein to NASA's Exoplanet Catalog (but except for stars), for the brightest stars in the sky, with <span class="math-container">$m_v&lt;4$</span>. I'd rather not have to refer to Wikipedia as they only list data from one source (or an average of several uncited sources).</p>
<p>I'm aware of SIMBAD, but that site doesn't have a very intuitive UI and doesn't list mass measurements. I've also tried CDS (<a href="http://cdsportal.u-strasbg.fr/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://cdsportal.u-strasbg.fr/</a>), but I can't find distance measurements from Gaia (although apparently Gaia doesn't measure distance and I need to put some kind of external study into a Gaia search query which I haven't got a clue how to use).</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-20T11:17:21.307Z
Mass of stars is not measurable unless you have a multiple-star system.SIMBAD is the canonical reference and the query interface is not bad. You better spend the time to get to know its interface than searching for alternatives which are less accurate, complete and vetted
planetmaker
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-21T11:32:07.307Z
Does it show the masses of stars in multiple systems? If not, where can I find that information aside from trawling through research papers for every star of interest (which I'm not prepared to do).
Will
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-22T09:59:12.113Z
Also, taking Alpha Circini as an example, CDS (http://cdsportal.u-strasbg.fr/?target=alpha%20Cir) has much more data than SIMBAD (http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=alpha+Cir&submit=submit+id). Why is this? The only data SIMBAD lists on stellar radius is completely at odds with any other source.
Will
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-25T00:17:35.807Z
Regarding your last comment, the stellar diameter of 2.7e6 km listed in Simbad converts to a stellar radius of 1.95 R_Sun, which seems pretty consistent with other sources.
Eric Jensen
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-25T14:02:01.283Z
Yeah. Accidentally forgot to halve it for radius. That's embarrassing.
Will
<star><star-catalogues><raw-data>
Is there a website out there where I can find/compare data on stellar parameters for the brightest stars?
Will
# Is there a website out there where I can find/compare data on stellar parameters for the brightest stars?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-09-20)

I'm looking for some kind of catalog/repository which lists stellar parameters (e.g. mass, radius, temperature) in a similar vein to NASA's Exoplanet Catalog (but except for stars), for the brightest stars in the sky, with $m\_v<4$. I'd rather not have to refer to Wikipedia as they only list data from one source (or an average of several uncited sources).

I'm aware of SIMBAD, but that site doesn't have a very intuitive UI and doesn't list mass measurements. I've also tried CDS (<http://cdsportal.u-strasbg.fr/>), but I can't find distance measurements from Gaia (although apparently Gaia doesn't measure distance and I need to put some kind of external study into a Gaia search query which I haven't got a clue how to use).

**Tags:** star, star-catalogues, raw-data

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Mass of stars is not measurable unless you have a multiple-star system.SIMBAD is the canonical reference and the query interface is not bad. You better spend the time to get to know its interface than searching for alternatives which are less accurate, complete and vetted  
> **username_0**: Does it show the masses of stars in multiple systems? If not, where can I find that information aside from trawling through research papers for every star of interest (which I'm not prepared to do).  
> **username_0**: Also, taking Alpha Circini as an example, CDS (http://cdsportal.u-strasbg.fr/?target=alpha%20Cir) has much more data than SIMBAD (http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=alpha+Cir&submit=submit+id). Why is this? The only data SIMBAD lists on stellar radius is completely at odds with any other source.  
> **username_2**: Regarding your last comment, the stellar diameter of 2.7e6 km listed in Simbad converts to a stellar radius of 1.95 R_Sun, which seems pretty consistent with other sources.  
> **username_0**: Yeah. Accidentally forgot to halve it for radius. That's embarrassing.  

---

## 1 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2020-09-25. Score: 3 | Accepted answer

As you’ve discovered, there are a lot of different catalogs out there, and many ways to search them. It would help if you could narrow your question a bit - what kind of data are you looking for? You seem to want stellar masses at least - what else? As noted above, there are few stars for which mass is measured directly, but there are robust ways of estimating it from other information, just as effective temperature can be determined from spectral type or photometry.

One catalog that might meet your needs is the [TESS Input Catalog (TIC)](https://tess.mit.edu/science/tess-input-catalogue/) or its brighter subset, the TESS Candidate Target List. It compiles information from a lot of other sources, and includes magnitudes from optical through infrared, as well as estimates of stellar mass, radius, temperature, metallicity, luminosity, and surface gravity. It also includes stellar parallax (i.e., distance) and proper motion from Gaia.

In addition to the ways of searching given in the above link, you can search it through Vizier [here](http://vizier.hia.nrc.ca/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=IV/38&-to=3) - I find the Vizier interface a little easier to navigate than MAST, though both have a lot of options.

Now this catalog may be overkill for what you want: [it has 471 million stars](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/aad050#ajaad050s4), though “only” 27 million of those have mass estimates, and “only” 2 million have distances. :-) So knowing more about what you want could help narrow things down.

Edit: The above numbers refer to an earlier release of the catalog, prior to Gaia DR2. The updated version (which is what I linked to from Vizier) has about 1.7 billion stars, of which 1.27 billion have distances and 455 million have mass estimates.

Edit 2: After clarification in the comments that the goal is finding information only for very bright stars, this isn’t the best catalog to use. While it does include entries for some bright stars (e.g. Vega, Betelgeuse), the information included is very limited, presumably because they are saturated (overexposed) in most surveys.

In general it is much harder to get *homogeneous* data for very bright stars because of this. There is a wealth of data on them individually, but because they are saturated in systematic surveys, there aren’t uniform sources of data on them to which known relations can be applied in bulk.

The [Yale Bright Star Catalogue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_Star_Catalogue) (searchable [here](https://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-3?-source=V/50/catalog)) is a good source of basic data (photometry, spectral type, distance, multiplicity), but for derived quantities like mass or radius you would have to apply known relationships yourself (if you need the data in bulk) or go to individual references for particular stars if you don’t need a lot of them. Honestly Wikipedia isn’t a bad starting point in the latter case - it is generally clear about what references the numbers come from.

> **Comments:**
> **username_3**: Can you revise the summary of the catalog contents to match the updated TIC catalog that you are discussing. In particular, there are something like half a *billion* mass and radius estimates and a billion stars with parallax-based distances. The paper to refer to is https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.10694  
> **username_0**: Thanks for your reply. I'm looking for all kinds of measurements including mass, radius, temperature, luminosity, rotational velocity and distance (preferably calculated from Gaia). I've been making do with the CDS portal, but I've hit a road block when it comes to multiple star systems in that either the parameters of only one star get reported (and it's completely unclear which component is being referred to), or the whole system is treated is one star for some bizarre reason (although I understand this can be unavoidable for spectroscopic binaries). Does the TESS catalog remedy this?  
> **username_0**: Also: I'm only interested in stars brighter than magnitude +4.00 at the moment. What difference does it make if a choose the "brighter subset" CTL over the TIC? If it only means I see fewer dim stars in the search, then that's fine, but if it affects the data of the target, then that would not be ideal.  
> **username_3**: @username_0 It maybe that multiple systems are unresolved and that the parameters are not available for the two stars separately. You really do have to understand the data and catalogues that you are using and be prepared to a bt of work to clean it in the bespoke way that you appear to require. The properties of the TIC/CTL catalogs are described in the link in my comment above.  
> **username_0**: Update: when I entered the target Alpha Lupi into both CTL and TIC, it gave me data for everything but the object I was interested in. Why  isn't there data on the target star?  
> **username_0**: To answer my own question, presumably that's because TESS only searches for stars with possible transiting exoplanets. Could you point me to a catalog which shows data for brighter stars, regardless of whether they have transiting exoplanets?  
> **username_2**: @RobJeffries Edited, thanks for catching that.  I should have noticed from the smaller number of parallaxes.  
> **username_2**: @username_0  I’ve updated my answer to include some discussion of issues with bright stars and a possible data source to look at.  
> **username_0**: Thank you for your edits, they've been very helpful. Unfortunately, the lack of homogenized data on bright stars is very disappointing to me, as I'm now left with data of varying age, quality, sensitivity, completeness, etc. which cannot be properly compared with other data within a reasonable time frame. One day there might be a nice consistent set of homogenized data that I can intuitively rely on, but until then, I'll have to give up on this pointless hobby.  
> **username_3**: @username_0 well quite - doing astronomy/astrophysics isn't a hobby and in the end you have to know what you are doing and be prepared to read some papers. The Yale bright star catalogue is perfectly homogeneous in terms of the measurements it lists for bright stars. The Hipparcos catalogue is pretty good in that respect too (and has parallaxes) What it doesn't do is give you age, mass and radius, because NONE of those things are directly measurable. Another one to look at (for a hobbyist) is the HYG database https://astronexus.com/hyg  
> **username_0**: Thanks, Rob. My 'hobby' specifically was effectively a third attempt at a bright star spreadsheet (although technically a wiki this time), but that now isn't possible because the data I want doesn't exist in the way I want it. I've read papers before and I know roughly how to extract the correct information - but it's just too time consuming. That's why the NASA Exoplanet Catalog was perfect for spread-sheeting exoplanets - homogenized data arranged into neat tables (easy to cross-examine), with clear references to their sources and the objects themselves.  
> **username_3**: @username_0 the Exoplanet catalog gives you a spreadsheet. You don't have to do anything. The point is that most of those parameters are *measured* for exoplanetary systems. They are not (and cannot be) for bog-standard single field stars. The HYG sounds perfect for your purposes, but *you* username_0 need to infer masses and radii (you won't be able to estimate ages very well) in the way that you see fit.  
> **username_0**: I'll certainly have a try with the HYG database. I can probably find out elsewhere, but I'm not familiar with how to use ".csv.gz" files. Can I import it into Excel or is it designed for Vizier?   Presumably by "infer masses and radii" you mean use a function to calculate the estimated value? I haven't tried that before. Do you have a particular formula to recommend because there are, to me knowledge, various ones to do similar things.  
> **username_2**: .gz is for gzip compression (similar to .zip).  Once you uncompress, the resulting .csv (comma-separated variable) file can be imported directly by Excel.  
> **username_0**: I've tried to look at various stars and I'm finding that the database just isn't handling multiple star systems adequately. For instance Alpha Andromedae only has one star according to HYG when it's a binary system.  

---

