Astronomy Information Systems

An Interactive Graphical Milky Way Concordance

The Concordance is a suite of programmes and catalogues which display all objects of interest in a user-specified sky window. Currently specialising in nebulous galactic objects, the Concordance plots source positions and sizes, and labels each object with its catalogue name and distance. The Concordance uses the SuperMongo plotting package.

astro!nfo ( Information Service )

astro!nfo is a Information Service made by amateur astronomers. There will published many informations about the amateur scene. Most of the text is written in German language.

AstroBrowse

AstroBrowe is a service to allow scientists to determine the existence, location, and access to astronomical data being held at various data centers, institutions, and other sites. It is intended to help answer the question: Tell me about...

Astrophysics Data System Archive Service ( ADS Archive )

This service provides access and search capability to Einstein Observatory Data, including the 29 CDROMs released by the Einstein Observatory project at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. These data include image files and photon event list files from the Image Proportional Counter (IPC) and the High Resolution Imager (HRI) instruments. Files are in standard astronomical FITS format which may be viewed through a standard FITS display tool such as SAOimage.

Astrophysics Data System Catalog Service ( ADS Catalog )

WWW Forms interface to ADS Catalogs

Astrophysics Data System ( ADS )

The ADS is a free software aimed at the Astrophysics community. It is a distributed environment that provides access to a variety of astronomical data for the scientific user community. At present the main emphasis is on making data collected by NASA space missions available to astronomers. This is being expanded to include access to data from ground based observations. The ADS provides access to over 190 astronomical catalogs and approximately 125,000 astronomical abstracts. It also provides direct access to the HEASARC Browse tool, NSSDC's Online Data and Information Service (NODIS), the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), and access to SIMBAD (Set of Identifications, Measurements, and Bibliography for Astronomical Data). The user is able to access all of this information via a simple-to-use Graphical User Interface (GUI). Simply " point and click" to retrieve the information you need for proposals, research projects, or classroom assignments.

AstroWeb index

WAIS index to the Astronomical Internet Resources database, a product of AstroWeb consortium.

Catalog of Infrared Observations ( CIO )

The Catalog of Infrared Observations is a database of over 200,000 published infrared observations of more than 10,000 individual astronomical sources over the wavelength range from 1 to 1000 microns. The catalog is available for downloading via ftp.

CEA WWW pages

WAIS index to the WWW pages of the Center for Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) Astrophysics (CEA), Berkeley, CA.

Delta Scuti Star Network and Whole Earth Telescope

The Delta Scuti Star Network and Whole Earth Telescope are both collaborations of astronomers all around the world, who observe short period variable stars

Digital Sky Survey ( DSS )

The Digital Sky Survey, consisting of the 1950/55 Palomar Observatory Sky Survey red plates for the northern sky and the SERC Southern Sky Survey (including the SERC J Equatorial Extension and some short V-band plates at low galactic latitude) is available on line. A name resolver is available to find the coordinates of the object of interest. This service is intended to occasional, non-time critical users and for small fields. Depending on the load and the size of the field, the access and response time could be very large.

ESA Data Dissemination Network ( at ESRIN )

Information Retrieval Service, EMITS, DODIS; Prototype International Directory; European Space Information System; Columbus Users Information System; ERS-1 European Central Facility; ERS-1 User Services; and more ...

European Space Information System ( ESIS )

The ESIS project, located at ESRIN, Frascati, Italy in the Information Systems Division of the European Space Agency is a service to the Astronomical and Space Physics communities to provide access to data of all kinds, including images and spectra from a number of space missions and bibliographic references from all the major Astronomical and Space Physics journals.

Galactic Cepheid Database ( DDO )

The Galactic Cepheid Database is a project of J. Donald Fernie that lists all known Population I cepheids. It consists of four tables listing data on 505 cepheids in the Galaxy. Information includes positional data, color excess determinations, periods, amplitudes and means of V, B and B-V derived by Fourier fits to magnitude and intensity light curves, radial velocities, distances, Z values, etc. Simple string searches of the database are possible using WWW client software such as NCSA Mosaic. The tables can be viewed in PostScript format or retrieved in either ascii or dBase IV versions.

Global Oscillation Network Group ( GONG )

IRAS Data Products

The Infrared Astronomical Satellite surveyed almost the entire sky in four infrared bands and obtained deeper maps and low-resolution spectra of thousands of infrared sources. All of the IRAS data products released by IPAC, including catalogs and images, are accessible through this interface, provided by the Astrophysics Data Facility at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. The interface also includes links to many related Astronomical Data Center catalogs.

JPL Molecular Spectroscopy ( JPL Line Catalog )

The JPL Molecular Spectroscopy Home Page is the starting point for accessing the JPL Submillimeter, Millimeter, and Microwave Spectral Line Catalog, which is a collection of predicted line positions and intensities for use in Astrophysics, Planetary Science, and studies of the Earth Atmosphere. There is also a collection of programs used to calculate the spectra.

NASA Information Systems Newsletter

WAIS index to NASA's Information Systems Newsletter from issue 21 onwards

NASA Planetary Data System ( PDS )

The Planetary Data System (PDS) archives and distributes digital data from past and present NASA planetary missions, astronomical observations, and laboratory measurements. The PDS is sponsored by NASA's Office of Space Science and Applications to ensure the long-term usability of data, to stimulate research, to facilitate data access, and to support correlative analysis. Subnodes include: MIT Microwave Subnode , Infrared Subnode , among others. There is a telnet_pds_guest_account at JPL.

NASA Space Physics Data System ( SPDS )

Observatoire de Paris ( Meudon )

Paris Observatory This is the official server at Paris Observatory. You will find information about the activities of the Observatory, on departments, on its history, etc.

Optical Identification Database ( OPTID )

The Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, IPAC, announces network access to the Optical Identification Database, OPTID. OPTID provides optical photographic star and galaxy identifications to IRAS Faint Source Survey (FSS) sources using two publicly available large-area optical catalogs derived from archival Schmidt plate material: The COSMOS/UKST Southern Sky Object Catalogue, which covers the sky south of declination +3 degrees and above galactic latitude 10 degrees and contains stars and galaxies to b=21st magnitude or fainter, and the Guide Star Catalog version 1.1, which covers the entire sky and is complete for stars to B=14-16th magnitude. OPTID not only provides identification probabilities for each candidate optical match to each FSS source, but also the probability each infrared source has no match in each of the optical catalogs. This information is avaliable as a computer readable table file and in highly informative reports and finding charts.

Out of This World star atlas exhibition

An exhibition of rare star maps and atlases from the History of Science Collection of the Linda Hall Library

PDS Data Set Catalog

WAIS index to a collection of text files extracted from NASA's Planetary Data System (PDS) Data Set Catalog (a Sybase database). The information contained within each text file describes an individual entity from the catalog's meta-data. These entities include: Planetary Data Sets and Data Set Collections, Missions, Instrument Hosts - both Spacecraft and Earth-Based, Targets - planets, asteroids, sky, star, etc. A good starting point when searching is to use mission names, such as Voyager or Magellan, and/or target names such as Earth, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune.

Planetary Data System Imaging Node ( PDSIMG )

The Imaging Node of the Planetary Data System is the curator of NASA's primary digital image collections from past, present, and future planetary missions. The node provides to the NASA planetary science community the digital image archives, necessary ancillary datasets, software tools, and technical expertise necessary to fully utilize the vast collection of digital planetary imagery.

Royal Observatory, Edinburgh ( ROE )

This site offers information about the extensive activities of the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, a PPARC establishment responsible for building common-user IR and sub-mm instrumentation and managing telescope sites and data archive resources, as well as the UK Schmidt Telescope and the SuperCOSMOS measuring machine. The ROE site also has links to, or acts as the home page for:

• Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh;
• latest research e-prints;
• the Crawford library;
• the ROE Visitor Centre;
• the UKIRT data archive;
• Public Understanding of Science;
• ROE Photolabs;
• Teacher Research Inititive

and much more information besides.

Set of Identifications, Measurements, and Bibliography for Astronomical Data ( SIMBAD at CDS )

The SIMBAD astronomical database, created and maintained by the CDS, Strasbourg, brings together basic data, cross-identifications, observational measurements, and bibliography, for celestial objects outside the solar system: stars, galaxies, and nonstellar objects within our galaxy, or in external galaxies. SIMBAD contains information for about 1.5 million objects, for which 4 million identifiers, 2 million observational measurements and 2 million bibliographical references are available. If you don't have a userid yet you first need to register. The following documents can be browsed or retrieved through the network: Hypertext version of the SIMBAD User's Guide and Reference Manual, Simbad News reprinted from Bull. Inform. CDS, Documentation of the SIMBAD astronomical database (ftp service).

SkyView

SkyView is a facility available over the net which allows users to retrieve data from public all-sky surveys conveniently. The user enters the position and size of the region desired, and the surveys wanted and the data is extracted and formatted for the user. Documentation available here .

ST-ECF directory of WAIS databases

WAIS index to a 'white pages' directory of astronomy & astrophysics related WAIS source files maintained at the Space Telescope - European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF). The files of type text used in the index were: /home/ns3f/ecf/ftp/pub/wais/*.src To get a list of all available sources, search for 'source'.

ST-ECF WWW pages

WAIS index to all files in WISE, the World Wide Web (WWW) based information system at the Space Telescope - European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF) which supports European astronomers in using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).

Starcat ( ESO )

STARLINK

The Starlink Software Collection is an anthology of astronomy applications packages and supporting subroutine libraries and utilities. It is provided by the UK Starlink Project and contributing institutions, and distributed to non-profit making organizations for use in astronomical research. At present, the collection comprises some 140 different items covering most wavebands and branches of astronomy. Most run on popular versions of UNIX. Starlink sites in the UK automatically receive regular updates, while other sites may obtain copies of the collection (and updates) on request to ussc@star.rl.ac.uk.

TCL WWW Info

These pages are an index to a set of TCL/Tk references on the WWW. The author has started off with pointers to the ones he could access from the TCL FAQ and added references as he came across them.

The Astrophysics Multi-spectral Archive Search Engine ( AMASE )

AMASE is an online astrophysics catalog developed using object-oriented database (OODB) technology to help researchers locate multi-mission data in the NASA archives.

The Latest Astronomy News Index ( Astronews )

This is a site with the Latest Astronomy news on it, as it happens. This site is updated regularly by the moderator and users of the site.

The Lausanne General Catalogue of Photometric Data ( GCPD )

The General Catalogue of Photometric Data (GCPD) build at the Institute of Astronomy of the University of Lausanne contains photometric data for about 200000 stars from some 75 different systems, taken from about 3300 papers. The WWW server allows to query the database ad retrieve any data from any photometric system. Searching the references by authors' names and keywords from the titles offers a possibility to retrieve the data from each of the 3300 papers directly.

Universal Research Archive of Networked Information in Astronomy ( URANIA )

Named for the muse of astronomy, the Urania resource is composed of electronic astronomical scholarly journals, bibliographic information, electronic archives of original data, electronic copies of the historical scholarly literature for the last twenty years and a special reference system archive organized by object in the sky. The separate resources which make up Urania comprise a functioning distributed digital library of astronomical information which provides a power and utility heretofore unavailable to the researcher.

WebStars ( Astrophysics on the Web )

WebStars, at NASA's High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center, is about astronomy & astrophysics; the Space Science Web Group; software & icons downloading; WWW technical pages & style guides; on-line articles about astronomy on the Web; HEASARC/StarTrax Browse and other online services; and virtual reality. If you have a document or resource you wish to be included, send me the text (preferably HTML) or a URL. WebStars is referenced by many other sites on the Web. It has been expanded and reorganised extensively since its first announcement in February, so visit again! The What's New page lists file change dates, to help you discover updates. Also, there are New Additions areas.

Z39.50 resources - a pointer page

a reference point for resources related to the Information Retrieval Service and Protocol standard, ANSI/NISO Z39.50. This standard was first successfully balloted in 1988; several companies implemented this standard or variants of this; but it did not develop large scale acceptance. A noteworthy implementation based on this standard is WAIS (Wide Area Information Services). Also see the Profiles section for more info on present development of WAIS within Z39.50.