Who is right? SIMBAD or NED ? - Is it Star or Galaxy?

• by TED91 moderator

  According to SIMBAD AWI00008hg is a star: http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=2MASS+J02313136-4826575&NbIdent=1 ,

  but according to NED it is a galaxy: http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/nph-objsearch?objname=6dF+J0231313-482658&extend=no

  Posted February 14, 2014 2:36 PM

• by TED91 moderator

  Another example: http://talk.diskdetective.org/#/subjects/AWI0000dq1

  Posted February 14, 2014 3:14 PM

• by TED91 moderator

  And another: http://talk.diskdetective.org/#/subjects/AWI0000cnr

  Posted February 14, 2014 8:31 PM

• by TED91 moderator

  and more: http://talk.diskdetective.org/#/subjects/AWI00005zk

  Posted February 16, 2014 5:29 PM

• by jdebes scientist, admin

  Thanks for catching these TED91! I suspect you're witnessing that many objects in the sky have been classified in an automated way--depending on the classification criteria, they will be noted as different things in different catalogs, including ambiguity between stars/galaxies!

  I ran into this all the time when working on a survey of white dwarfs--because they are blue, they are often mistaken for AGN, and AGN are often mistaken for white dwarfs. The only way to identify them concretely is to take a spectrum. For many of these objects, no one has had a chance to do that. Given the SED, it looks more like a galaxy, but I could be wrong.

  Posted February 16, 2014 7:38 PM