A European Space Agency satellite launched on 8 August 1989 to measure the positions, distances, motions, brightnesses, and colours of stars to an accuracy far beyond that attainable from the ground. Its name recalls the ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who compiled the first known star catalogue, and is also an acronym for High Precision Parallax Collecting Satellite. Hipparcos observed until 1993. The main Hipparcos Catalogue of 118 218 stars was published in 1997. An auxiliary catalogue of lesser accuracy, containing over a million stars, was called the Tycho Catalogue. Further data analysis led to the expanded Tycho 2 Catalogue containing over 2.5 million stars, published in 2000, including 99% of all stars down to magnitude 11, almost 100 000 times fainter than the brightest star, Sirius.