Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to show that some important astronomical information is still not taken into account in the documental description of historical star catalogues. Design/methodology/approach -A sample of 28 historical star catalogues (eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries) from the Royal Institute and Observatory of the Spanish Navy was selected in order to analyse their structure and to identify information patterns. Findings -The analysis shows that there are a number of technical parameters which are not present in the cataloguing standards and which should be taken into account in the bibliographic descriptions of these specialised documents since they are of great interest to astronomers and astrophysicists. On the other hand, star catalogues provide some cartographic information which can be described by these standards but whose corresponding fields are not widely used by cataloguers. Originality/value -A proposal of new technical parameters is given in order to try to improve the bibliographic records of these astronomical resources. Some directions are also given in order to identify the sections of the catalogues where these parameters may be found, making the task of locating them easier. This work has been carried out thanks to funding from the Fundación Séneca (Science and Technology Regional Agency of Murcia, Spain) and is one of the results of ARGOS II project, reference number 11936/PHCS/09. The authors are grateful to the anonymous referees whose observations and suggestions were very helpful and to Dr
Este artículo presenta un breve estudio sobre los trabajos geodésicos emprendidos por la Armada Española en el siglo XIX, y los instrumentos utilizados por el Observatorio de San Fernando y por las comisiones hidrográficas, especialmente la Comisión Hidrográfica de la Península, encargada del levantamiento cartográfico de las costas españolas.
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