Lowell Proper Motion Survey

The Lowell Proper Motion Survey was an astronomical survey of stars with proper motion, collected from plates created on the Lawrence Lowell Telescope (aka Pluto Telescope or Pluto Discovery Telescope) at Lowell Observatory. It began in the 1950s with a catalog of stars in the northern hemisphere, which eventually included 8991 stars. It was extended into the northern portion of the southern hemisphere with 2758 more stars.

The plates (or plate positions?) were numbered and specified with the prefix-letter G (G numbers), e.g., G239, with a suffix to specify which star showing in the plate. These designators are still used for some of the stars. All the stars are necessarily nearby if a proper motion is perceived, and those likely to be known by this designator would be those that didn't receive earlier attention, among other things, not very bright in the sky.