scat(1)

🌸 scat — the manual page, but make it a vibe 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because scat is about to become your new obsession ✨

---

✨ NAME ✨

scat — find catalog stars in a square or circle on the sky 🦋

---

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

scat [options] [-b or -j] ra dec [equinox]

---

💫 DESCRIPTION 💫

so like, scat is your little utility bestie for finding all of the Hubble Space Telescope Guide Star Catalog (GSC), U.S. Naval Observatory A2.0 (UA2), B1.0 (UB1), SA2.0 (USA2), or UJ (UJC) Catalogs, or locally catalogued objects — in a specified region of the sky — and listing their sky coordinates to standard output. like, it just serves them to you. periodt 💅

if the -w flag is set, they get written to a file called objectname.catalogname, where objectname is whatever you passed to -o on the command line (defaulting to "search" if you didn't, no judgement 🫶), and catalogname is whatever you passed to -c on the command line. the catalog defaults to the GSC if no -c argument is present. iconic behaviour honestly.

scat resembles rgsc(1) and star(1), which can search from lists of coordinates but cannot sort the output. so like, they're the cousins who can't get their life together. sgsc, suac, and susac are links to this program.1 👑

---

💅 OPTIONS 💅

one bullet per option, every single one, no skips, no cap:

• -a — list the single closest catalog source. just the one. the main character 🎀
• -b <RA> <Dec> — output B1950 (FK4) coordinates around this center
• -c <name> — reference catalog (gsc(=HST GSC), ua2(=USNO-A2.0), TMC(=2MASS Point Source Catalog), gsc2(=GSC II), ub1(=USNO-B1.0), local file, etc.)
• -d — output RA and Dec in degrees instead of hh:mm:ss dd:mm:ss
• -e — output ecliptic coordinates
• -f — output search center for other programs
• -g <class> — HST Guide Star Catalog object class (0=stars 3=galaxies -1=all)
• -h — print search and column heading, else do not
• -i — print catalog object name, not catalog number
• -j <RA> <Dec> — output J2000 (FK5) coordinates around this center
• -k <keyword> — add value of this keyword to end of output lines from a tab table search
• -l — print search center and closest star on one line
• -m [<bright magnitude>] <faint magnitude> — limiting catalog magnitude(s) (default none, bright -2 if only faint is given)
• -n <num> — number of brightest stars to print
• -o <name> — object name used for output file naming
• -q <year> — equinox of output position in fractional years
• -r <radius> — halfwidth (-radius if negative) of search area in arcseconds (default 10)
• -s d|m|n|p|r — sort by (d)eclination, (m)agnitude, (n)o sort, (p)distance from center, or (r)ight ascension.
• -t — tab table to standard output or file
• -u <x> <y> — print x y instead of number in front of non-tab output, before RA and Dec or add x and y columns to end of tab output line
• -v — verbose listing of processing intermediate results
• -w — write output file objectname.catalog or search.catalog if -o is not used.
• -x <type> — GSC object type (0=stars 3=galaxies -1=all -2=bands)
• -y <year> — epoch of output positions in fractional years (for proper motion only)
• -z — append to existing output file search.catalog or objectname.catalog. start file if it does not already exist.

bestie note: -z is the "yes and" of file flags — it appends if the file's already there, and just starts a fresh one if it isn't. no drama, no data loss, we love that for us 💖

---

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

imcat()

---

🧚 WEB PAGE 🧚

http://tdc-www.harvard.edu/software/wcstools/scat/

---

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Jessica Mink, SAO (jmink@cfa.harvard.edu) — legend behaviour, fr fr 💜

---

and that's the whole thing, bestie 🫶 this page is from WCSTools, the scat(1) manual page, dated 30 January 2003 — so like, it's vintage and it ate and left no crumbs 💅✨🌸