APASS Data Release 6 now available

We've released DR6 for APASS.  It is available through either Seqplot, or through the query form that can be found at http://www.aavso.org/apass

This release includes approximately 42 million stars, covering about 95% of the sky.  The remaining 5% have been imaged, but did not make it into the current release.  Each object has been measured at least twice.  The final APASS catalog will have 4 measures per object, so we are about halfway through the data collection phase.

APASS photometry will be included in the upcoming UCAC4 release.  We also expect to have a VO-complaint published version in July.  It is also being used by a number of other projects, including the DASCH plate-scanning project at Harvard.

Each release to date covers a new area of the sky, and is usually accompanied by a flurry of activity by the sequence team.  They have a number of fields that people have requested (new or modifications of existing sequences), that can be satisfied with the additional photometry.  However, this is probably the last such case, as we now are in the "mopping up" phase.

APASS DR6 is the subject of a poster at the upcoming AAS meeting in Anchorage, and will also be part of a press conference on either Tuesday or Wednesday.  Keep tuned!

Arne