HabCat: A Catalog of Nearby Habitable Systems

The Catalog of Nearby Habitable Systems (HabCat) contains a selection of 17,129 candidate host stars for potential habitable exoplanets for complex life. It was created from a database of 118,218 stars in the Hipparcos Catalogue by combining the information on stellar distances, variability, multiplicity, kinematics and spectral classification (Table 1). The catalog was created on 2003 by scientists Jill Tarter and Margaret Turnbull under the auspices of Project Phoenix (1998-2004) as part of SETI.

This page is hosting HabCat together with some more recent analysis and visualizations. HabCat original publication listed 55 stars with planets on 2003. We also update this lists as part of our Habitable Exoplanets Catalog (HEC). There are now 165 stars with planets in the HabCat list. Note that this list is based on more recent stellar data and does not necessarily matches the original HabCat criteria. The list of all these stars with planets is listed here.

Original Criteria for HabCat Candidates

• 1. Stars must be at least 3 Gyr old.

  2. Stars must be non-variable.

  3. Stars must be capable of harboring terrestrial planets (measured by [Fe/H]).

  4. support a dynamically stable habitable zone.

Description of Data Fields

HabCat is available list basic astrometric data for its 17,129 candidates stars (Table 1).

Table 1. Sample list of the stellar data and format contained in HabCat (Turnbull and Tarter, 2003).

Download HabCat

• • Original published fixed-length text format.

  • Excel CSV text file.

Legend of Data Columns of CSV file above

• • HIP — Hipparcos catalog number

  • RA — Right Ascension

  • DEC — Declination

  • V —  Johnson V-band magnitude

  • PARX — Parallax

  • SIGPX — Parallax standard error

  • B-V — B-V color index

  • SIGBV — B-V color index standard error

  • CCDM — Components of Double and Multiple Stars catalog number

  • HD — Henry Draper catalog number

  • BD — Bonner Durchmusterung catalog name

References

• • Turnbull, M. C. and Tarter, J. C. (2003) Target Selection for SETI: 1. A Catalog of Nearby Habitable Stellar Systems. The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 145, 181. PDF ArXiv:astro-ph/0210675v1.

  • Turnbull, M. C. and Tarter, J. C. (2003). Target selection for SETI. II. Tycho-2 dwarfs, old open clusters, and the nearest 100 stars. The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 149, 423. PDF

Additional Resources

• • HabCat for Google Earth (SETI@UC Berkeley)

• Hipparcos Catalog

• RECONS

• HEASARC Star Catalogs (NASA GSFC)

• The HYG Database