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Baltic Astronomy, Vol. 6, 279-282, 1997 Baltic Astronomy, vol. 6, 279-282, 1997. COMPUTING FACILITIES AND DATABASES IN PULKOVO D.D. Polozhentsev Pulkovo Observatory, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg 196140, Russia Received July 21, 1996. Abstract. A brief account is given of the computational facilities available at the Pulkovo Observatory during the postwar years. Key words: data analysis - databases In 1953, the staff of the Pulkovo Observatory moved from the city to the restored main building of the observatory, which had been destroyed during the war. At that time the Pulkovo astronomers had at their disposal semiautomatic electric calculators, "Mercedes" and "Rheinmetall", made in GDR, and also Soviet handpowered arithmometers. Before the war, the main computational facilities at Pulkovo were logarithm tables, hand arithmometers and abacuses. The computing station was organized in 1956. It was equipped with punched card calculating analytical machines which consisted of perforators, tabulators, sorting devices, controllers, reproducers and multipliers. All these instruments provided for the automatization of the whole computing cycle. Some computational work was done using these machines (Polozhentsev 1960, 1965). The organization of the first astronomical database began on punched cards. First of all, the fundamental catalogs (FK3, FK4 and PFKSZ) were prepared, followed by star lists of the AGK3A and SRS International programs. The Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow, kindly provided us with a version of the GC catalog on punched cards. At about the same time the computing centers of the Academy of Sciences were organized in Moscow and Leningrad. They were 280 D. D. Polozhentsev equipped with the first Soviet-made electronic computers - BESM - and the first astronomical computations were made there, mainly for the most difficult, time consuming calculations such as the calcu- lation of apparent places of stars, solution of the equations of pho- tographic astrometry, etc. In 1967 the Pulkovo Observatory obtained its first electronic computer, "Minsk-22", which very soon became popular among the astronomers and was often in operation for more than 17 hours a day. This computer was in use for approximately 10 years. Most of the time it was used for time consuming computing operations, such as calculations for the Astronomical Almanac. Then, the compilation of the astronomical database and the bank of the main astronomical programs started on magnetic tapes (Polojentsev 1976 ab, 1977). The first computers of the "Riad" series were manufactured in the USSR in the 1970s; then the ASSEMBLER and FORTRAN be- came the main programming languages. Computers of this type, at first ES-1022 and, later on, EC-1033 and ES-1036, were installed at Pulkovo. These machines are compatible with the IBM-360 com- puters. The Pulkovo astronomers used these machines for continuing their work on the creation of the astronomical database and the bank of standard programs (Varin & Polojentsev 1978, Polojentsev 1980). The problem of networking of the Astronomical Data Center was then discussed by Kandaurova & Polojentsev (1985). At that time the staff of the Computing Laboratory consisted of about 20 members and included astronomers-programmers, electron- ics engineers, mechanics and operators. The work on the problem of networking of the Astronomical Data Center was again discussed within the framework of the Working Group for Astrometric Data of the Astrometric Commission of the USSR Astronomical Council. At the end of the 1980s the first IBM-type personal computers were installed at the Pulkovo Observatory. Now the observatory has about 50 IBM compatible computers. A new problem has now ap- peared - the necessity of unifying the efforts of astronomers and their computing means to facilitate the solution of astronomical problems. Thus a problem of compiling the Astronomical Data Bank (ADB) and the Local Computing Network (LCN) for IBM-type computers gradually arose. At present it is being tackled by a group of enthu- siastic volunteers. The organizing of a local computing network needs a certain capital investment. The cost of the organization of a LCN is about 100-200 USD per personal computer. We have benefitted from the Computing facilities and databases in Pulkovo 281 European astronomical community, which has decided to support the Pulkovo Observatory through the Southern European Observatory by a grant of 33 000 DEM for the purchase of a powerful "Sparc Station" computer which will work as a server for our local network. Work has already begun on the creation of the Astronomi- cal Data Bank for personal computers (Polojentsev & Fomin 1992, Goncharov & Polojentsev 1993). As in the case of the ADB for com- puters of the IBM-360 type, the ADB for PCs will be organized into a hierarchical system. More important, the data will be easily acces- sible. There will be three types of access to these data: (1) Direct access, i.e. the data are on hard disk of the PC; (2) Daily access, i.e. the data are on a floppy disk of the PC; (3) Archival access, when the data are on a floppy disk which is kept in a storage. After organization of the LCN, the data will be kept on a file- server. REFERENCES Goncharov G. Α., Polojnetsev D.D. 1993, Pulkovo Astronomical Database for personal computers, in Astronomy from Wide-Field Imaging (IAU Symp. No. 161), eds. H.T. MacGillivray et al., Kluwer Academic Publishers, p. 32 Kandaurova K.A., Polojentsev D.D. 1985, Astronomical Data Bank of the Pulkovo Observatory, Bull. Abastumani Obs., No. 59, 27 Polozhentsev D. D. 1960, Compilation of a program for the Talcott method by means of punch-card machines, Izvestia Pulkovo Obs., No. 166, 135 Polojentsev D.D. 1965, Computation of refraction from the Pulkovo Ta- bles by means of automatic computers, Izvestia Pulkovo Obs., No. 176, 89 Polojentsev D.D. 1976a, Determination of the absolute azimuth of the transit instrument by the Nemiro Chain method, Inf. Bull. "Algo- rithms and Programs", Moscow, No. 2, 73 Polojentsev D. D. 1976b, The reduction of observations of the right ascen- sions of stars, obtained with the Great Transit Instrument, Inf. Bull. "Algorithms and Programs", Moscow, No. 2, 73 Polojentsev D.D. 1977, Stellar data and computing facilities at the Pulkovo Observatory, in Compilation, Critical Evaluation and Dis- tribution of Stellar Data (IAU Colloq. No. 35), eds. C. Jaschek k G. A. Wilkins, Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, p. 195 Polojentsev D.D. 1980, Soviet Centers of Astrometric Data (SCAD), in Algorithms of Celestial Mechanics, p. 17 282 D. D. Polozhentsev Polojentsev D.D., Fomin V.A. 1992, Astrometric bank of the Pulkovo Observatory for personal computers, in Computer Methods of Celestial Mechanics (Abstracts of All Russian Seminar), p. 34 Varin M. P., Polojentsev D. D. 1978, Astrometric software at the Pulkovo Observatory, in Modern Astrometry (IAU Coll. No. 48), eds. F. V. Pro- chazka L· R. H. Tucker, Institute of Astronomy, Vienna, p. 307 .
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