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Space Facts






The SAO Star Catalog

Known for its Washington museums, the Smithsonian is also serious about research. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) is a "research institute" of the Smithsonian Institution headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is combined with the Harvard College Observatory to form the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The SAO catalog, with 258,997 records, is a result of one of their research studies.

References: http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/sao-home.html, http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/star-catalog/sao.html