astro-ph/9411028 7 Nov 1994 Send Running Aliated to Astrophysics Division Space Science Department Europ ean Space Agency pro ofs Observatoire de Lyon avenue Charles AndreF SaintGenisLaval Cedex France Space Telescope Europ ean Co ordinating Facility Europ ean Southern Observatory Head Space Telescope Science Institute San Martin Drive Baltimore MD to Network Resources Heinz Andernach KarlSchwarzschildStr Network heinzadelunivlyonfr Resources Rob ert J Hanisch fmurtaghesoorg hanischstsciedu Heinz Andernach Fionn Murtagh D Garching Germany for Astronomers

Contents

Introduction

Network Services

Electronic Mail

Listservers

Usenet

FTP and Anonymous FTP

Archie

Internet and DECNet No de Names and Addresses

Remote Logins

Information Discovery Tools WAIS Gopher and the WorldWide Web

Astronomical Catalogs and OnLine Databases

Astronomical Catalogs

NASA Space Science Data Center

Centre de DonneesAstronomiques de Strasb ourg

Canadian Astronomy Data Center

Pune India

CDROM Catalogs and Databases

OnLine Databases

Atomic Databases

DIRA

EINLINE

EXOSAT

HEADSBrera OnLine Service

HEASARC

LEDA

NED

SIMBAD

STARLINK

Observatory Archives of Raw or Calibrated Data

CanadaFranceHawaii Telescope

Cosmic Background Explorer

Europ ean Southern Observatory

Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer

Compton Gamma Ray Observatory CGRO

HIPPARCOS

Hubble Space Telescope

Infrared Pro cessing and Analysis Center

IRAS

Infrared Space Observatory

International Ultraviolet Explorer

James Clerk Maxwell Telescope Archive

La Palma Archive

ROSAT

Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope Archive

Lunar and Planetary Institute

Solar Data

Distributed Databases

Astrophysics Data System

Europ ean Space Information System

Plate Catalogs Digital Optical Sky Surveys and Finding Charts

Plate Catalogs

The UK Schmidt ESO Schmidt and AAT Plate Catalogs

Digital Optical Sky Surveys

Automated Plate Measuring Machine

COSMOS

ST ScI Guide Star Plate Scans

Minnesota Automated Plate Scanner

Finding Charts

Bibliographical Services and Preprints

Bibliographic Services

Pro ject STELAR

Astrophysics Data System Abstract Service

Lunar and Planetary Institute

UnCover

Abstracts and Indices of Astronomical Journals

Acta Astronomica Archive

Preprint Services

Los Alamos National Lab oratory

CERN

SISSA

Preprint Lists from NRAO and ST ScI

Astrolib

OnLine Library Card Catalogs

Electronic Publishing

Dictionaries Thesauri Directories Meetings and Jobs

Dictionaries and Thesauri

Directories

Astronomical Meetings

Jobs

Astronomical Software

Other Information Systems and Services

Conclusions

A URLs of Note

B List of Acronyms

ABSTRACT

The amount of data pro duced by large observational facilities and space missions has led to

the archiving and online accessibility of much of this data available to the entire astronomical

community This allows a much wider multifrequency approach to astronomical research than

previously p ossible Here we provide an overview of these services and give a basic description of

their contents and p ossibilities for accessing them Apart from services providing observational

data many of those providing general information eg on addresses bibliographies software

etc are also describ ed The eld is rapidly growing with improved network technology and our

attempt to keep the rep ort as complete and uptodate as p ossible will inevitably b e outdated

shortly We will endeavor to maintain an up dated version of this do cument online

Subject headings Astronomical Catalogs Astronomical Databases Astronomical Archives

Astronomical Software DataHandling Techniques YellowPage Services Networking Internet FTP WWW General Notes Miscellaneous

Introduction

With the growth of widearea networking services such as electronic mail le transfers information

services bibliographic information software libraries etc as well as online catalogs and databases

astronomers have access to a wealth of information via the terminal or workstation on their desks This

rep ort provides an overview of many of these services most of them available for free via network connection

The present rep ort arose from do cumentation written separately by Hanisch Andernach

and Feigelson and Murtagh Some general references on the sub ject include Jaschek and Heintz

Jaschek Murtagh and Heck Albrecht and Egret Heck and Murtagh

Davenhall b c Heck and Murtagh and Crabtree Hanisch and Barnes a While

further information on many of the services presented here may b e found in these texts we have made

extensive use of information presented in gray literature like newsletters observatory rep orts and

electronic circulars An excellent overview of network resources and services not limited to astronomy is

the b o ok by Krol

Our rep ort is certainly not complete and likely biased somewhat by our own interests Moreover

the information presented in this rep ort is sub ject to rapid change For this reason an online version

will incorp orate changes and corrections It will b e available by anonymous FTP and other ways at sites

stsciedu and ecfhqesoorg

Network Services

Electronic Mail

Electronic mail email is a widelyused service One needs to know an exact address for ones

corresp ondent Dierent forms of address may b e feasible due to aliases for machine names which are

supp orted at the corresp ondents machine However an unsupp orted form of address or a mistyping of the

address will in most cases lead to a returned b ounced message and in some cases the failure to arrive

at the intended destination will not b e indicated to the sender A number of suggestions are given in x if

you wish to check up on someones email address Use of any one of a range of mail programs eg mail

xmh is p ossible which still most often supp ort the transfer of plain text les only To transfer binary

data by email one should rst use some appropriate ASCI I co ding of the binary data examples include

uuencode and uudecode

In this article we employ b oth Internet and NSIDECNet formerly SPAN address conventions

The DECNet form NODENAME can often b e addressed using an Internet routing of the form

namenodednetnasagov SPAN was closely related to VAX VMS systems and is b eing overtaken by

universal acceptance of the Internet Note that the existence of a DECNet address do es not necessarily

imply that a corresp onding Internet address also exists although it is usually p ossible to route email via

gateway and forwarding systems The NASA Science Internet Network Applications Information Center

NSI NAIC provides a very useful guide for email users contact naicnasagov

Listservers

Listservers are software packages for the supp ort of email distribution lists They also allow for

storage and automatic access of les Although originally developed for use on IBMs Bitnet listserver

software is now available for many systems There are tens of thousands of listserver distribution lists

Generally messages will b e automatically sent to all subscrib ers if addressed to a list called xxxL at address

xxxLnodenamedomain Subscription and unsubscription requests are dealt with automatically by

addressing listservnodenamedomain or in other implementations xxxrequestnodenamedomain

name results in For example a oneline email message consisting of the text subscribe xxxL your

your email address b eing added to the distribution list automatically To check on les stored at the

listserver the oneline message help or index sent to listservnodenamebitnet will get you started

Usenet

Usenet is a p eertop eer network which came into b eing in late For installations which do not

rely on telephone line links b etween machines it has b een sup erseded by the Internet By Usenet was

supp orting a large volume of newsgroups and this functionality has b een carried over to the Internet As

of August an estimated host machines have access to over newsgroups and ab out

million users at these sites are newsreaders Not all sites receive the Usenet news as this requires a site to

nd another site or organization that will agree to forward news ie act as a feed The access software

available to you on your system to access the newsgroup may b e a command such as vnews rn trn

xrn nn GNUS Gnews notes NNTP etc

A number of newsgroups are devoted to astronomical discussions and many more are devoted to

sub jects in physics chemistry and computer science that might also b e of interest to astronomers Usenet

sites include many of the universities government research institutions and observatories where most

astronomers work If you are at one of these sites Usenet news is probably available to you If not

you might want to lo ok for someone who would allow you to access news on their system or you might

want to consider b ecoming a Usenet site yourself For information ab out the latter send email to

mailserverpitmanagermitedu containing the message

send usenetnewsannouncenewusersHow to become a USENET site

Alternatively this is available by anonymous FTP see b elow in this section for further details on anonymous

FTP at the no de pitmanagermitedu in the le

to become a USENET site pubusenetnewsannouncenewusersHow

One key to eective use of Usenet is nding the right newsgroups Newsgroups are arranged

hierarchically by sub ject of interest The top level big seven hierarchies are comp sci news maintenance

issues misc rec recreational topics soc so cial and talk debateoriented Your system may not

have all groups since it is up to individual sites to decide which groups to carry You may also nd

additional hierarchies for lo cal or regional groups as well as hierarchies that are not really sub ject to Usenet

rules including alt eclectic bionet biz gnu Free Software Foundation GNU pro ject and vmsnet

VAXVMS topics There are more than newsgroups in the hierarchies mentioned here For the

big seven hierarchies there is a formal mechanism for creating new newsgroups and new groups app ear regularly

Of obvious interest to astronomers are the following newsgroups

sciastro general astronomy discussions and information

sciastrofits issues related to the FITS image storage standard

sciastrohubble issues related to the Hubble Space Telescope

sciastroresearch discussions of current professional research topics

altsciastroaips discussions on the AIPS image pro cessing system

altsciastrofigaro discussions on FIGARO software

sciastro provides considerable discussion of amateur and p opular astronomy questions but it is read by

many professional astronomers and is one p ossible forum for technical questions

Other p otentially useful newsgroups in the sci hierarchy include scichem sciimageprocessing

scioptics sciphysics scispace and scispacenews There are many groups in the comp

hierarchy that may b e of interest such as the compsys groups for various vendors of computer hardware

the compos group for your op erating system the compwindows group for your windowing system X

Op en Lo ok Motif etc and if you are a programmer the complang group for the language of your

choice There are newsgroups for software that you might use in your research or for writing pap ers such

as compgraphics compgraphicsvisualization compemacs comptextframe comptexttex

and scimathsymbolic

A nice spino of Usenet newsgroups is that many individuals have taken it up on themselves to maintain

FAQ Frequently Asked Questions les Since these are often p osted to the newsgroup approximately

monthly a go o d way to see if a FAQ exists is to subscrib e to the newsgroup and listen in As a

condensation of the collective wisdom of the newsgroup and admittedly signaltonoise often leaves much

to b e desired FAQs provide excellent allround introductions to a topic and comprehensive background

information

The adass news hierarchy for Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems has b een

established in parallel to the Usenet news This set of news groups is intended as a forum for discussion of

astronomical data analysis software These newsgroups were established by the IRAF Group at NOAO

Information ab out how to subscrib e to this hierarchy or how to set up a feed can b e obtained by sending

email to the Usenet news administrator at newstucanatucnoaoedu The hierarchy currently covers

the ADASS Conferences and discussions ab out IRAFrelated software but other groups are encouraged to

establish additional subgroups

FTP and Anonymous FTP

FTP le transfer proto col allows copying of les b oth ASCI I and binary from a remote machine

A very common practice is to place les of general interest in a restrictedaccess account which allows

anonymous FTP access The details of using anonymous FTP dep end a little on the type of system used

system node name followed by a login as user but it consists usually of a command such as ftp remote

anonymous or as ftp The password is arbitrary but network etiquette is to provide the users email

address as the password and some anonymous FTP installations require this This allows the provider of

the FTP archive to track usage more easily and contact users should that b e necessary

Anonymous FTP allows restricted access to the contents of certain directories Often les which are

intended for general access are available in sub directories under a pub directory For transfer of les the

commands get and put are used transfer of binary les requires setting FTP into binary mo de using the

command bin prior to initiating the transfer In this text we shall refer to relevant data les available via

anonymous FTP with nomenclature which combines no de name and directory address nodedirfile

By this we mean that one rst has to connect to node by ftp node then change to directory dir cd dir

and nally issue the command get file to receive a copy of the le

Archie

Automatic p olling of registered anonymous FTP sites is carried out by a software system called Archie

Searching through the directories so pro duced can b e a valuable rst step once one knows a program name

in nding a site from which to download the program or le If Archie has b een set up on your system

then a command such as xarchie will provide a window interface to some site which supp orts Archie To

check up on what Archie oers you may i check out some site supp orting it if your site do es not ii

refer to Emtage or iii send email to infobunyipcom Registering an anonymous FTP address

for search by Archie is done by emailing the registration request to archieadminbunyipcom NCSA

provides a WWW server for access to Archie use the URL httphoohooncsauiuceduarchiehtml

or httphoohooncsauiuceducgibinAA See x for more information ab out the WorldWide

Web and the Mosaic user interface

Internet and DECNet No de Names and Addresses

The Internet is actually a collection of networks that are all connected together Systems on the

Internet use a communications proto col known as TCPIP Transmission Control Proto colInternet

Proto col The network resources describ ed in this article generally require access to the Internet which

allows for remote logins and le transfers Many astronomers are connected via the NASA Science Internet

NSI or other organizations which provide supp ort for b oth TCPIP and DECNet communications

TCPIP numeric addresses consist of four numbers separated by decimal p oints eg DECNet

numeric addresses are sometimes given as two numbers separated by a decimal p oint or as a single number

the convention used here A DECNet address such as is converted to a single number by multiplying

the rst number by and adding the second number

Remote Logins

The primary mechanisms for establishing an interactive session on a remote computer are telnet on

systems running TCPIP and SET HOST on systems running DECNet In either case in order to use the

resources that require an interactive login one needs to know a username on the remote system and in

some cases a password

Information Discovery Tools WAIS Gopher and the WorldWide Web

A number of b o oks describing the Internet and the many to ols available for lo cating and retrieving

information have recently b een published A survey of these including intended readership price etc is

available in a do cument by J Quarterman This survey is available as RFC RFC in the tradition

of technical networkrelated do cuments stands for Request for Comments One lo cation among many

where this le can b e found is niscjvncnetpubRFCrfctxt

In the last two years or so a number of socalled resource discovery to ols have b ecome widely used

Examples are WAIS Wide Area Information Servers Gopher and WWW World Wide Web Some of

these oer a commandline access mechanism on a machine to which you can login with telnet However it

is much more ecient to use the windowing p otentials of such software As examples Lynx is a linemo de

browser for WWW and Mosaic is a widelyavailable windowbased browser Generally the clientserver

paradigm is utilized software sits on your machine which handles your mouse or keycontrolled requests

in your lo cal windowing environment This client communicates over the network with the remote server

as the need arises There is compatibility b etween these to ols and often Mosaic for example is used to

access remote sites using Gopher and to carry out freetext searches using WAIS We will briey describ e

these dierent to ols

Gopher oers a convenient way of accessing anonymous FTP accounts connecting to remote sites or

receiving les To use it and assuming that the client software has b een installed at your site give the

command xgopher This command may b e dierent at your site Without a network address following

this command by default you will access a University of Illinois Gopher service Navigation to various

other sites is accomplished by clicking on the appropriate line in what you are shown Further information

on Gopher including where to obtain client and server source co de is available in Anklesaria and McCahill

A search to ol which can b e used in conjunction with Gopher is called Veronica

A WAIS server oers an indexed set of les so that full and freetext retrievals may b e carried out

A large number of source les with extension src which sp ecify the network access addresses of servers

are in a Directory of Servers available via anonymous FTP from thinkcomwaiswaissourcestarZ

You or your system manager should retrieve all relevant source les Further information on WAIS

including where to nd source co de for server and client ends of this system is available in Fullton

WAIS p ermits you to index and thereafter search using free text your own lo cal text les or

mail les In fact a wide range of le types can b e used as input to WAIS To display les which are

not plain text les Postscript les for example WAIS allows the sp ecication of a lter program which

p ermits display Thus if WAIS is informed at the indexing stage that the input les b eing indexed

are of type PS the information may b e used subsequently by client software to direct retrieved les

through the Ghostview Xterminal screen previewer To register a WAISindexed collection of do cuments

with the WAIS Directory of Servers one uses the register parameter when indexing which sends

the source le to the appropriate registration addresses waisdirectoryofserverscnidrorg and

waisdirectoryofserversquakethinkcom

The WWW WorldWide Web is a crossnetwork hypertext system It is often used via the user

interface Mosaic of NCSA National Center for Sup ercomputing Applications The command mosaic or

Mosaic or xmosaic may b e the one available on your system for access to the web A standard form of

address and directory information used by Mosaic is referred to as a URL Universal Resource Lo cator

There are now over URLs of p otential interest to astronomers Mosaic and the WWW are extremely

useful to ols for navigating the network esp ecially b ecause they provide access to other network facilities

Gopher Archie FTP telnet etc

Using a URL via an appropriate browser such as Mosaic gives access to text and graphics which often

encompasses hypertext This means that some text or graphical icons are clickable and gives direct access

to a new window of textual or image information Hyp ertext is supp orted by a language in app earance

A

not unlike a SGML or Standard Generalized Markup Language or even L T X called HTML or Hyp ertext

E

Markup Language Further details of Mosaic including source co des for various workstation PC and

Macintosh platforms is available at NCSA ftpncsauiucedu in directory Webxmosaic A primer on

HTML can b e accessed at URL httpwwwncsauiuceduGeneralInternetWWWHTMLPrimerhtml

An informal group of WWW enthusiasts the AstroWeb Consortium has b een established to maintain

a list of URLs of astronomical imp ortance Members include R Jackson CSCST ScI D Wells

NRAO A Ko ekemoer Mt Stromlo D Egret and A Heck Strasb ourg and HM Adorf and F

Murtagh STECF At the URL httpfitscvnraoeduwwwastronomyhtml these astronomical

resources are group ed into the following categories Observing Resources Data Resources Organizations

Software Resources PublicationRelated Resources PeopleRelated Resources Various Lists of Astronomy

Resources Astronomical Imagery and Miscellaneous Resources A partial list of astronomical URLs is

given in App endix A

Astronomical Catalogs and OnLine Databases

A go o d initial reference for online services is Albrecht and Egret and a new version of this b o ok

is currently nearing completion

A distinction is made in this pap er b etween

Astronomical catalogs ie static nal compilations of data for a given set of cosmic ob jects They

can b e further sub classied into observational catalogs compilation catalogs critical compilation

catalogs and bibliographic compilation catalogs see Jaschek

Online search facilities for published data which allow searches of astronomical ob jects by name or

p osition on the sky Examples are SIMBAD NED and LEDA

Observation logs andor archives of raw or calibrated data of astronomical observatories like HST

La Palma WSRT VLA etc which can b e checked online if certain ob jects have b een observed

already and if the data are public or not

The dierent online services describ ed b elow oer one or more of these items and they are listed under

what they predominantly supp ort The institutions providing these services are often referred to as data

centers One may broadly sp eak of large general purp ose data centers like NASANSSDC of which the

Astronomical Data Center ADC is just a part and the CDS Strasb ourg mediumsized regional data

centers eg in Moscow Tokyo La Plata Beijing Pune etc and missionoriented data centers like IPAC

ESRIN ESTEC ST ScI and many others The latter have mainly b een set up in recent times due to the

enormous amount of data pro duced by space missions

Astronomical Catalogs

NASA and CDS Strasb ourg were the rst institutions to systematically collect machinereadable

versions of astronomical catalogs These two centers are very comprehensive for groundbased astronomical

catalogs and they have a common agreement to mutually exchange their newly acquired data sets including

a common digit numbering system However many other interesting catalogs are not available from these

two centers see eg Creze or Andernach b Some of them can b e found within various other

databases eg DIRA EINLINE EXOSAT HEASARC STARCAT STARLINK Bulk tabular data

published in ApJ ApJS AJ and PASP are issued on CDROM see Abt while those published in

AA or AAS are stored by CDS see AA or AAS

NASA Space Science Data Center

The NASA Space Science Data Center NSSDC supp orts several online indices and database

systems including requests for data from the IUE archive and from the Astronomical Data Center ADC

through its OnLine Data and Information Service NODIS Access is via telnet to nssdcagsfcnasagov

or NSIDECnet to no de NSSDCA login as nodis The user will b e asked to register

and then b e presented with a selfexplanatory menu which eg allows to browse the list of available

astronomical catalogs

The NSSDC has developed an automated data retrieval request service utilizing the NSSDC Data

Archive and Distribution Service NDADS The data held by NSSDC have b een written to optical disks

which are jukeboxaccessed The NDADS Automated Retrieval Mail System ARMS p ermits researchers

to rapidly retrieve selections from the current NDADS holdings Requests are submitted via electronic mail

and the data may b e retrieved via anonymous FTP or NSIDECNet copy It is also p ossible to have the data

sent directly to the requesters computer For more information on ARMS send an empty email message

to archivesndadsagsfcnasagov or NDADSAARCHIVES with the words SEND INFORMATION in the

sub ject line

NODIS also provides access to NASAs Master Catalog NMC which contains information ab out

spacecraft their instruments and the data sets therefrom By summer data on orbiting spacecraft

and some prelaunch spacecraft were available

The NSSDC issues a newsletter on pap er times p er year which informs ab out new data

sets available from there including CDROMs mainly from space missions and including planetary

or geophysical data To subscrib e to NSSDC News send email to NCFREQUEST and say so An

electronic newsletter of the NSSDCADC is also issued and can b e subscrib ed to by sending email

to listservhypatiagsfcnasagov with one line in the b o dy of the message SUBSCRIBE ADCNEWS

name your

Centre de Donnees Astronomiques de Strasbourg

CDS Centre de Donnees Astronomiques de Strasb ourg is the oldest Europ ean astronomical data

center founded Like NASAADC the CDS archives some astronomical catalogs comprising a

total of Gbyte of data not including very large data sets such as the IRAS sky maps or the Green Bank

radio survey images Access to most catalogs is oered via anonymous FTP to cdsarcustrasbgfr

in the sub directory pubcats CDS has recently started to archive les in sub directories

directly named after their published lo cation eg pubcatsJAAS has tabular data published

in AAS Vol p As of June there are such Jles As all other catalogs these are

listed in the le catslis Get the le ReadMe for further information For example to retrieve catalog

VI I which is the same as A at NASAADC type cd pubcatsVII and then mget to

copy all les related to that catalog to your computer Note that some les in the CDS archive those

ending in Z are compressed and that such les should b e retrieved with FTPs binary mo de Use the

UNIX command uncompress file name to convert them to plain ASCI I For questions or requests

for catalogs listed in catslis but not yet available in the FTP archive contact SIMBADQUESTION or

questionsimbadustrasbgfr CDS pro duces a regular journal the Bulletin dInformation du CDS

BICDS which informs ab out new catalog acquisitions and related items A regular email circular with a

listing of new catalog acquisitions can b e ordered from catssimbadustrasbgfr or copied directly from

le cdsarcustrasbgfrpubcatscatsnew CDS has recently dened do cumentation standards for

catalogs Ochsenbein which can b e found in cdsarcustrasbgfrpubcatsdoctex References

Ochsenbein ab Egret and Ochsenbein

Canadian Astronomy Data Center

The Canadian Astronomy Data Center CADC lo cated at Dominion Astrophysical Observatory

DAO Victoria was formed in the mideighties to serve as the Canadian center for distribution of data

from the Hubble Space Telescope CADC receives a copy of the HST data in the same way as STECF

do es see x CADC also archives data from the CanadaFranceHawaii Telescope CFHT see x

Access to b oth of these archives is available through STARCAT see x and CADC provides its own

collection of astronomical catalogs which can b e accessed through STARCAT Reference Crabtree et al

b

Pune India

The services of a recently created astronomical data center at Pune India can b e accessed by telnet

to no de login as user data The center currently provides astronomical catalogs which it has

obtained by exchange from NASA or CDS as well as connections to foreign databases for users in India

who have no telnet facility The center plans to archive image data in the future The catalogs are mostly

available on disk and can b e accessed using lo cal software Send any comments or questions to Ms Geeta

at adciucaaernetin or to Ajit Kembhavi akkiucaaernetin

CDROM Catalogs and Databases

In NASA released a CDROM with the most requested astronomical catalogs A list of

cdromerrata or errata is available via anonymous FTP from hypatiagsfcnasagovpubcdromadc

by sending email to listservhypatiagsfcnasagov with the one line in the b o dy of the message

get pub adc cdromerrata

Numerous other CDROMs have b een issued eg the Guide Star Catalog CDs and a CD with

sample scans from the ST ScI plate scans of the Palomar Sky Survey At the time of writing this pap er the

rst set of a total of CDROMs with digitized optical surveys of the full sky is b eing distributed by ASP There are dierent CDROMs with Xray data from the EINSTEIN satellite and four CDROMs

containing the IRAS high ecliptic latitude Sky Survey Images Two CDROMs with radio images and source

catalogs have b een issued by NRAO The PGCROM with the Principal Galaxy Catalogue Paturel

Bottinelli and Gouguenheim includes standalone search software There is one CDROM each on

ROSAT The Images and on The Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer Science Archive A volume set

of CDs was issued by NASAGSFC in September with data from the Comet Halley Archive It has

already b een mentioned that the bulk of the tabular data published in the main North American journals

is issued on CDROM regularly The NSSDC OnLine Service see x maintains a list of CDROMs

of astronomical interest and other compilations have b een given by Davenhall b and within the

MediaTheque pro ject of CDS Heck a

OnLine Databases

Atomic Databases

There are extensive sp ectroscopic and other atomic or molecular data in computerreadable les in

various lab oratories but the prop ortion of these that are networkaccessible is still small A bibliography

of Atomic Data through to June was given by Butler and reviews of the gray literature on

atomic data have recently b een given by Martin ab and Smith These pap ers contain

many useful addresses and references

The Atomic Energy Levels Data Center and the Data Center on Atomic Transition Probabilities at the

National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST are building an atomic sp ectroscopic database for

astronomy This database includes energylevel wavelength and transition probability data mainly fom the

more recent compilations published by the two NIST Centers as describ ed in sections I I and I I I of Smith

and Wiese These are planned to b e made available through the NASA Astrophysics Data System

x

Two collections of atomic data are available at the Queens University Belfast one on electron impact

excitation of atoms and ions the other on photoabsorption data for atoms and ions the socalled opacity

pro ject OP The latter collection is more relevant to astronomy containing for example oscillator

strengths The OP is a collab orative pro ject involving institutions in the USA France Venezuela and

Germany as well as the UK It comprises approximately GB of data held as ASCI I text les The resulting

socalled TOPBASE database is exp erimentally available from at CDS Strasb ourg Lo ok in the

directory cdsarcustrasbgfrpubtopbase A ReadMe le and a users manual should b e

consulted b efore actually using the database through telnet to cdsarcustrasbgfr username topbase

password Seaton For further information contact the CDS sta at questionsimbadustrasbgfr or

Keith Berrington Department of Applied Mathematics Queens University of Belfast Belfast BT NN

amgukacqueensbelfastappmathsvax References Cunto et al ab

DIRA

DIRA Distributed Information Retrieval from Astronomical les is an ongoing pro ject to manage

data from astronomical catalogs b eing carried out by the ASTRONET Database Working Group in

Bologna Italy The DIRA database contains ab out original catalogs Gb of data of Galactic and

extragalactic data written in a standardized DIRAsp ecic ASCI I format Several of these catalogs are not

available from the NASAADC or CDS data centers Access to DIRA is via telnet to bodirabocnrit

or via DECNet by SET HOST BODIRA Login as user dira with password dira

Then type dira again to invoke the software Cho ose DB INFO and then type LIST to see which catalogs

are available The command WHERE indicates in which directory they are stored in case a direct DECNet

or FTP copy is preferred which must b e executed from outside the DIRA environment The output of

the searches are ASCI I les that can b e used in other application programs Catalogs can also b e read

or written in the FITS table format A VT terminal emulator is needed for standard searches and a

graphics terminal emulator Tek VT for the graphics tasks The latter allows one to plot ob jects

in an area of sky taken from various catalogs onto the screen with various symbols of the users choice

Sorting as well as selecting and crossidentication of ob jects from dierent catalogs is p ossible Unix

versions for DecUltrix and Alpha OSF are now available and SUNOS versions are in progress A reduced

version for p ersonal computers PCDIRA is also available but lacks many of the graphical routines

During DIRA supp orted ab out remote logins of these from outside Italy For the DIRA

manual as well as for more information contact M Nanni nanniastbobocnrit ASTBONANNI

at the Istituto di Radioastronomia in Bologna Italy References Benacchio Benacchio and Nanni

Nanni Benacchio Nanni and Tinarelli

EINLINE

The Einstein Online Service EOLS or EINLINE at the HarvardSmithsonian Center for Astrophysics

CfA provides access to over data sets catalogs and mission logs Many are related to the Einstein

Xray satellite archive but catalogs of stars quasars radio sources see b elow sup ernova remnants as

well as ROSAT observations can b e found Do cumentation and ASCI I les generated by user queries can

b e automatically emailed to users and binary data les such as FITS images from the Einstein CDROM

collection can b e retrieved using anonymous FTP There are CDROMs available for downloading

images andor photon list arrays EINLINE allows p ositional searches through groups of similar data sets

all Xray all radio or even ALL catalogs in one run This is the MQQ multiple quick query option As

a rule EOLS catalogs are also available through NASAs Astrophysics Data System ADS see x

A sp ecial feature of EOLS is the large number of searchable radiosource catalogs collected and

provided by the rst of the present authors in the course of his activities for the IAU Working Group on

Radioastronomical Databases Comm As of August some source catalogs with

entries are searchable either individually or in anity groups This exceeds by several times the amount

of radiosource data available from any other online service and most of the tables are not yet archived

at the established data centers Some lines of do cumentation have b een prepared by the EOLS

team but further submissions of data must b e accompanied by appropriate do cumentation provided by the

authors to guarantee their incorp oration into EOLS

Log on to EOLS via telnet to einlineharvardedu via SET HOST EINLINE

or else via the WWW under URL httpheawwwharvardedueinlineeinlinehtml Login as user

einline no password is required Do cumentation for the catalogs can b e emailed directly from within

the EOLS or downloaded with FTP from the directories einlineharvardeduDoc Do cuments

for any of the catalogs can serve as templates for new contributions For questions contact D Harris

harriscfaharvardedu or C Stern Grant sterncfaharvardedu References HEAO Newsletters

subscrib e to edpoheadcfaharvardedu Andernach Harris et al Andernach a

Andernach et al

EXOSAT

The EXOSAT database and archive provides online access to the results and data pro ducts sp ectra

images and light curves from the EXOSAT mission as well as access to data and logs from other missions

eg EINSTEIN COSB ROSAT and IRAS The system is missionindep endent and includes timing

image pro cessing and sp ectral analysis packages as well as software to allow transfer of analysis results

and pro ducts to the users home institute In addition some familiar optical IR and Xray catalogs

including the HST Guide Star Catalog are available EXOSAT allows statistical studies to b e p erformed

on large samples of astronomical ob jects and to retrieve scientic and bibliographic information on single

sources The complete database is lo cated at the EXOSAT observatory at ESTEC and is accessible via

SET HOST EXOSA EXOSAT or ESISXO or via telnet to exosatestecesanl

Preregistration is necessary username and address are requested during the rst login Send inquiries to

requestexosatestecesanl References White and Giommi Osb orne Reynolds and

Parmar

HEADSBrera OnLine Service

The HEADSBrera OnLine Service HEADS High Energy Astrophysics Database Service is

maintained at the Astronomical Observatory of Brera Milano Italy It is based on the EXOSAT Database

System currently developed mainly by NASAs HEASARC x HEADS currently provides access to

data from a number of past observatories eg Einstein and EXOSAT and will gradually b e extended

to include the public data archives of current and up coming missions The service also provides access to

catalogs results and data pro ducts images sp ectra light curves and dedicated analysis packages There is

considerable overlap in the data available through HEASARC HEADS EXOSAT and Leicester UK but

HEADS supp orts the complete set of data pro ducts with the exclusion of the ROSAT data that in any

case can b e obtained from HEADS through the HEASARC database Login is either via SET HOST ASTMIB

or telnet to astmibmiastroit and login as user xray no password is required

For a quick reference guide or further inquiries contact either L Stella stellaastmimmiastroit or

G Tagliaferri tagliaferriastmimmiastroit Reference Tagliaferri and Stella

HEASARC

The High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center HEASARC is lo cated at the NASA

Go ddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt MD USA and its activity is a joint eort b etween the

Lab oratory for High Energy Astrophysics LHEA and the National Space Science Data Center NSSDC

HEASARC was created in to archive and provide access to data from high energy astrophysics

missions As of June some databases were available Most of the databases contain data from

highenergy astrophysics missions such as EXOSAT Einstein Ginga GRO Compton HEAO ROSAT

ASCA formerly ASTROD BBXRT and XTE while others contain wellknown groundbased catalogs

see Tyler for a list Users can sort search plot database entries and crossidentify b etween

these data sets Telnet to legacygsfcnasagov and login as user xray no password

For help on batchprocessing of large lists of co ordinates names and other time consuming queries send

an empty email message to hdbreqlegacygsfcnasagov Firsttime users will b e asked to give a

HEASARC username which will b e used to allo cate a user directory where les can b e kept for use in

subsequent sessions Similar services are oered at three other sites in Europ e HEADSBrera see ab ove

ESTEC in The Netherlands see x and Leicester for UK users only The HEASARC also publishes

a newsletter called Legacy contact K Smale at ksmalelheavxgsfcnasagov to b e added to the

mailing list References Tyler

LEDA

The LyonMeudon Extragalactic Database LEDA was created in at Lyon Observatory and is

the oldest extragalactic database Paturel et al Paturel Gouguenheim and Bottinelli It gives

access to many parameters up to p er ob ject of astrophysical interest for ab out galaxies as of

June Finder charts with SAO stars can b e created and images taken from the POSS are available

for galaxies in Postscript format An XWindows interface allows users to display these on their

screen The main idea is to collect raw measurements from literature and to calculate mean homogenized

data in the same spirit of de Vaucouleurs et al when preparing the series of Reference Catalogs of Galaxies

RC RC RC In fact the RC de Vaucouleurs et al and the Principle Galaxy Catalog PGC

Paturel et al Paturel Bottinelli and Gouguenheim were created using LEDA

An SQLlike query language allows the user to dene and extract galaxy samples by complex criteria

Finder charts in Postscript format can b e created with LEDA galaxies and SAO stars of any usersp ecied

p osition at almost any scale including that of the POSS and ESOSERC sky surveys A batch mo de

allows queries via email by sending a list of names or co ordinates to ledamaillmcunivlyonfr

Dep ending on whether the sub ject sp ecied is LIST or LISTALL the system will return via email either

the basic or all stored astrophysical parameters of the retrieved ob jects For sub jects FLAMEQ FLAMGA

and FLAMSG the system will return Flamsteed allsky pro jections in Postscript format for any set of input

ob jects or p ositions in RA and DEC of B

LEDA is accessible via telnet to lmcunivlyonfr login as leda No password is

required The novice user may choose the menu option Instructions for Use New facilities are frequently

added to the system Suggestions and questions should b e sent to G Paturel patuadelunivlyonfr

or MC Marthinet mclmcunivlyonfr

NED

The NASAIPAC Extragalactic Database NED supp orted by the Infrared Pro cessing and Analysis

Center IPAC is a computerbased central archive intended to accumulate a broad range of published

extragalactic data including radio optical UV IR and Xray sources and organize them for fast and

exible retrieval via electronic networks It is currently the most used of such retrieval services Batch

searches for source lists with up to ob jects p er job are supp orted and the results can b e retrieved via

anonymous FTP normally within a few hours after the user is notied via email

As of August NED provides p ositions names and basic data for extragalactic ob jects

as well as bibliographic references to published pap ers and photometric data

p oints from catalogs and pap ers Also available online are abstracts of recent articles from several

journals AA AJ ApJ Ast Rep orts IAU Circ MNRAS PAS Japan PASP and of do ctoral

dissertations since of extragalactic interest NED encourages submission of English abstracts of any

Ph D thesis on extragalactic ob jects NED has an X Window Graphical User Interface GUI supp orting

mousedriven menus and imagedisplay capabilities Style menus for VT terminals continue to b e

supp orted They provide a faster though more limited characterbased interface To access NED telnet

to nedipaccaltechedu and login as user ned For help or more information send mail

to nedipaccaltechedu

NED is also accessible using Mosaic If you are familiar with the Web connect to IPAC using URL

httpwwwipaccaltecheduhomehtml Reference Helou

SIMBAD

SIMBAD Set of Identications Measurements and Bibliography for Astronomical Data is pro duced

and maintained by the Centre de Donnees Astronomiques de Strasb ourg CDS Access to SIMBAD

requires a password and application may b e made by email to questionsimbadustrasbgfr or

SIMBADQUESTION SIMBAD may b e accessed in the United States via the Smithsonian Astrophysical

Observatory SAO where a gateway to SIMBAD is maintained under contract with NASA US

astronomers should apply directly to SAO for access by email to SIMBADcfaharvardedu SIMBAD

charges for its services but these costs are supp orted by NASA for astronomers at institutions in the

United States SIMBAD is accessible via telnet to simbadustrasbgfr on the Internet or

via SET HOST SIMBAD As of March it contained ob jects For stars over

entries the data include co ordinates sp ectral type blue and visual magnitudes and prop er motions

The data for galaxies and quasars some entries and other nonstellar ob jects entries

include co ordinates blue and visual integrated magnitudes morphological type size and p osition angle In

addition there are observational data for some dierent types of measurements Over citations

of ob jects are provided based on bibliographic references complete back to for stars and to

for nonstellar ob jects The total number of identiers including those for the PPM star catalog is

Stars from the Guide Star Catalog can b e extracted for any sky region within SIMBAD using

the findgsc command As with NED batch jobs for retrieval of many ob jects at a time are supp orted

References Egret Wenger and Dub ois Egret SIMBAD I I I

STARLINK

STARLINK of Rutherford Appleton Lab oratory UK oers the Starlink Catalog Access and Rep orting

System SCAR which is a relational database management system for astronomical catalogs The SCAR

package will so on b e replaced by CATPAC describ ed in Starlink User Note SUN by A Woo d see

STARLINK Bull Oct Both packages have the capability to extract data from the requested

catalog using input criteria to manipulate it using various statistical and plotting routines to output data

from the catalog to assimilate new catalogs and to crossidentify b etween catalogs based on userdened

criteria see Starlink User Notes SUN and SUN To work on these catalogs one would need

to copy the binary data le plus a description le within the ADAM environment However not all

astronomical catalogs exist in the required SCARcompatible format The most recent list of available

catalogs as well as information on how to obtain access to a STARLINK account is available from A

Woo d arwstarrlacuk References Davenhall Starlink Bulletins subscription requests to

Mike Lawden at mdlstarrlacuk Davenhall b

Observatory Archives of Raw or Calibrated Data

There are several observatories which maintain archives of their observational data Most of these have

to b e consulted manually ie by p ersonal request to some archive manager although many institutions

are making their archival data sets available online Here we mention only observational facilities whose

data or at least observation logs can b e accessed or browsed remotely

CanadaFranceHawaii Telescope

From September data from several instruments at the CanadaFranceHawaii Telescope CFHT

have b een archived to large optical disks The CADC is bringing older CFHT data into the archive and

by September the archive will contain data from February onward FITS headers of all data

frames are sent electronically to the Canadian Astronomical Data Center CADC in Victoria daily where

an observation catalog is maintained The catalog is browsable within the STARCAT system and online

images of public CFHT data can b e displayed via the Preview system developed by the CADC within

Starcat see x The proprietary p erio d for CFHT data is two years References Durand et al

Crabtree et al b

Cosmic Background Explorer

The Cosmic Background Explorer COBE was launched in November and has led to the discovery

of uctuations in the microwave background as announced in April The COBE Prop oser Information

Package gives details of the data sets that will b e available Briey a limited set of data Galactic plane

data for FIRAS and DIRBE and the rst years full sky mapping for the DMR were made available to

outside investigators starting in June The complete data set will b e made available in June in a

variety of forms

FITS binary tables available at the COBE data center and through the NSSDC

FITS image extensions for certain data sets available at the data center

COBEformat les at the data center

A Prop oser Information Package is available for those who plan to analyze COBE data in resp onse

to an Astrophysics Data Program NASA Research Announcement In addition to general

advice for prosp ective COBE Guest Investigators it contains descriptions of each of the COBE

Pro ject Data Sets to b e released in June The package is available as the Postscript les

data setsproposer info nssdcagsfcnasagovcobeproject

There are several nonCOBE data sets also kept on line at the COBE analysis center eg IRAS data

some of which have b een repro jected and reformatted so that they lo ok like COBE data as regards sky

pro jection and resolution Some of the COBE data have b ecome available through NASAs Space Sciences

Data Center NSSDC See the le nssdcagsfcnasagovcobeaareadmedoc for instructions on how to

access such data via anonymous FTP For request of data on tap e contact requestnssdcagsfcnasagov

and for further assistance email to leisawitzstarsgsfcnasagov References White and Mather

Isaacman

European Southern Observatory

The archive of ESO observations currently December contains around images All

observations p erformed with the ESO NTT New Technology Telescope including EMMI and SUSI since

April are archived It is accessible through STARCAT x References Albrecht and Benvenuti

PeronAlbrecht and Grosbl

Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer

The Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer EUVE launched in June includes a sp ectrometer and

three scanning survey telescop es The sp ectrometer samples the range from to nm in three channels

short medium and long with an average sp ectral resolution of An additional deep survey channel

coaligned with the sp ectrometer provides p ositional information on observed targets Two CDROMs

have b een released with EUVE data S Bowyer and R F Malina ed For more information contact

send email to archiveceaberkeleyedu with the word help in the b o dy of the message or browse the

anonymous FTP directory ceaftpceaberkeleyedupubarchive References Christian Dobson

and Malina Stro ozas et al

Compton Gamma Ray Observatory CGRO

Data and information from NASAs Compton Gamma Ray Observatory CGRO are available

from the GRO Science Supp ort Center by telnet to antwrpgsfcnasagov login as user gof Among

the information oered there is eg the B catalog of gamma ray bursters from the Burst

and Transient Source Experiment BATSE Time proles for all events are available via WWW

httpenemygsfcnasagovcossccosschtml Reference Hanlon

HIPPARCOS

HIPPARCOS HighPrecision Parallax Collecting Satellite is an ESA satellite which was launched in

August and is dedicated to the measurement at the milliarcsecond level of p ositions trigonometric

parallaxes and prop er motions for ab out stars The target list the HIPPARCOS Input Catalog is

available from CDS or NASAADC as catalog I or A resp ectively see x and x A series

of pap ers on the satellite p erformance and rst results app eared in AA For further information

contact C Turon turonmesioaobspmfr or D Morin morinmehipaobspmfr References Turon

et al a b

Hubble Space Telescope

Both the ST ScI and the STECF as well as the CADC see x provide online information

services and access to the complete HST Archive The HST data archive is describ ed in Pasian et al

and Long et al As of mid the archive is comprised of some les in data sets

and o ccupies TB of storage space on optical disks and new data continues to b e archived at an average

rate of GBday Sub ject to proprietary p erio d restrictions typically one year preview images of HST

data are accessible through b oth the StarView user interface at ST ScI and through the STARCAT user

interface at the STECF and the CADC The preview data are generated at the CADC and then sent to

b oth the STECF and ST ScI

ST ScI runs a system called Space Telescope Electronic Information Service STEIS which is an

anonymous FTP archive also accessible via gopher and WWW containing information on HST prop osals

instruments observation logs and software Of particular interest is the Archive Exp osure Catalog

AEC a list of all completed observations Copies of the AEC reside in directory hstarchive in the

SSCATALOG the latter containing solar system observations A les READMEAEC AECCATALOG and AEC

listserver listservstsciedu supp orts many types of current awareness services such as instrument

news weekly and daily summaries of p erformance planned observing timelines and lists of completed

observations ST ScIs WWW home page is lo cated at httpstsciedutophtml

ST ScI has two host computers providing external access to the HST archive stdatastsciedu

VMS op erating system and stdatustsciedu Unix op erating system To

get started with the HST archives telnet to one of these machines and login as user guest with password

archive Run the Starview user interface by entering the command starview for the simple ASCI I

terminal version or xstarview for the X Windows version Note that you can also access the HST archive

via ST ScIs WWW home page

In order to actually retrieve data the user must register type register when logged in on stdata or

stdatu or register via the WWW archive page Each user is given an individual account on either stdata

or stdatu users choice Data retrieved from the archive will app ear in the data directory of stdata or

stdatu Users are sent email when all requested data has b een staged to these areas and then the data

can b e transferred to your home machine using FTP Use the command readnews to b e kept up to date on

the status of the archive and changes to the retrieval software

Similar services are provided by the STECF for Europ ean users of HST The bulletin b oard

service STINFO is accessed by telnet to stinfohqesoorg with login username stinfo no password

Questions ab out HST can b e sent to an email hotline stdeskesoorg or ESOSTDESK An anonymous

FTP account which includes a software library various other software items do cumentation test

images and so on is at address ecfhqesoorg If you have WWW access then the quickest online

source of information regarding the the archive for HST and ESO data is available using the URL

httparchhttphqesoorgESOECFArchivehtml

The STECF also distributes HST data to Europ ean archival researchers Data requests are prepared from within STARCAT While catalog browsing is anonymous a registration is necessary for retrieving data

The STECF copy of the HST archive is available via telnet to stesishqesoorg login as user starcat

or contact catalogesoorg for help STARCAT also provides an interface to a number of astronomical

catalogs listed in the Do cumentation for online catalogs item including the capability of sorting

selecting and crosscorrelating catalogs Online versions of the Stars Family of directories dictionaries

and data sets see x and x are available from within STARCAT For further information and users

guides contact B Pirenne at the STECF bpirenneesoorg ESOBPIRENNE For do cumentation on

STARCAT send a request to shillesoorg

Canadian users should request HST archive data through the CADC contact cadcdaonrcca for

more information

References HST Catalog User Guide Schreier Benvenuti and Pasian Ochsenbein

Pirenne et al Adorf Jackson and Murtagh STECF Newsletter subscription

requests to rfosburyesoorg ST ScI Newsletter subscription requests to elliottstsciedu

Infrared Processing and Analysis Center

IPAC Infrared Pro cessing and Analysis Center Pasadena CA USA oers online access to its datasets

and services IPAC is a primary data no de for the ADS x and provides several ob ject catalogs which

can b e accessed indep endently telnet to xcatscanipaccaltechedu and login as user xcatscan This

service requires the user to run an X Windows server Contact Rick Eb ert rickipaccaltechedu for

further details IPAC issues a Newsletter on pap er subscription requests as well as general questions ab out

network services at IPAC should b e sent to infoipaccaltechedu IPAC supp orts the NASAIPAC

Extragalactic Database see x as well as the ISSA Postage Stamp Service see x Reference

Eb ert

IRAS

A full set of uncalibrated IRAS InfraRed Astronomical Satellite data is stored on an optical disk

jukebox at the Space Research Center in Groningen accessible semionline through a mail server The server

provides data extraction calibration and imaging for survey and Low Resolution Sp ectral Data Analysis

software GEISHA and display software GIPSY are used More interactive access to the database is

planned for the future The system is transp ortable to other sites The manual for remote access to the

IRAS server can b e obtained via email to irasmansronrugnl An FTP connection allows retrieval of

serversronrugnl The request can select the data Data can b e requested by sending email to iras

data for the area of interest recalibrate uxes and p osition of the infrared measurements and recombine

them into an image Several options can b e set for this pro cessing to obtain the b est p ossible reconstruction

of the IR sky for the users research The user will b e notied when the request is pro cessed and ab out how

to retrieve the data by FTP Note that b efore using the mail server the user has to preregister by sending

email to irasmansronrugnl For further questions contact D Kester IRAS manager dosronrugnl

or irasmansronrugnl

The exp erimental ISSA Postage Stamp Service is available via WWW

httpbrandoipaccaltecheduISSAPS and allows to retrieve maps of size degrees of a

usersp ecied area in all four IRAS bands and microns with a pixel size of arcmin

The maps will b e displayed on the screen and can also b e retrieved in FITS format for further display and

pro cessing

The IRAS Low Resolution Sp ectra are available via telnet to hyadescoloradoedu login as user

lrsuser A more complete set of sp ectra is available from the University of Calgary Users should send

email to kwokirasucalgaryca for more information The sp ectra from the University of Calgary

are also available from the CADC via STARCAT x including online views of the sp ectra

Four CDROMs with the IRAS Sky Survey Atlas Images were released by IPAC in mid one each

for the three sky coverages HCON HCON and HCON and another one for the average of them For

up dated overviews of IRAS data pro ducts in general see a recent issue of the IPAC Newsletter x

References Walker Ro elfsema Kester and Wesselius Wesselius et al

Infrared Space Observatory

ISO Infrared Space Observatory is an ESA space observatory to b e launched in September Up

todate information on the mission can b e obtained via anonymous FTP from ftpestecesanlpubiso

or ftpipaccaltechedupubiso Information on ISO on the WWW is b eing set up under URLs

httpisosaestecesanl and httpwwwipaccaltechedu Data centers are b eing

established at Heidelb erg Germany and Rutherford Appleton Labs RAL UK see eg Gabriel et

al The ISOIRAS Newsletter is edited by H Walker hjwstarrlacuk and ISO Info is a

newsletter issued by ESA contact K Leech at kleechisosaestecesanl

International Ultraviolet Explorer

IUE International Ultraviolet Explorer a satellite launched in January and still pro ducing data

is equipp ed with a cm telescop e and two sp ectrographs for the range to A with resolutions of

either or IUE led to the rst mo dern astronomical data archive and is also the rst heavily used

archive Currently all data requested from the archive corresp onds to over years of observing time ie

almost four times the actual mission duration Three centers maintain a complete uptodate copy of the

IUE Archive the NASA IUE archive at NSSDC GSFC USA the ESA IUE archive at VILSPA Spain

and the SERC IUE archive at RAL UK The plan is to have all IUE data remotely accessible in a nal

archive by De La Penaet al IUE Newsletter Oct presents a merged observation

log from on microche The observing log can b e queried online SET HOST VILSPA

login as user VILSPA with password DB The user is provided with a menu Detailed usage of the system is

describ ed in the ESA IUE Newsletter and an example of the scientic p otential of the archive when

used systematically is given by laDous The IUE Uniform Low Disp ersion Archive ULDA is a

uniform subset of the IUE archive and is distributed by ESAVilspa ULDA is available through national

hosts and further information may b e obtained from A Talavera VILSPAAT or iuehotesocbitnet

The ESA IUE Newsletter is published quarterly by ESA and NASA contact iueobsvvilspaesaes

or VILSPAIUEOBS References Wamsteker Ponz et al laDous

James Clerk Maxwel l Telescope Archive

The Royal Observatory Edinburgh ROE maintains a data archive of observations made with the

millimeterwave James Clerk Maxwell Telescope JCMT in Hawaii The archive contains data obtained

since January Data b ecome public after a proprietary p erio d of one year The observation log

is maintained online and can b e interrogated remotely using the ARCQUERY software see text on

La Palma x and Westerbork x b elow Access is via SET HOST RLESIS login

as ESIS select menu option answer REVAD and login as ARCQUERY Alternatively one can telnet

directly to host starroeacuk and login as arcquery Online do cumentation is available via telnet

to starroeacuk login as jcmtinform Copies of a Users Guide and Quick Reference Sheet can b e

obtained from A McLachlan at ROE amlstarroeacuk The JCMT Newsletter is edited by G Watt

at ROE gdwstarroeacuk References Davenhall a Hummel and Davenhall

La Palma Archive

This archive contains most of the raw telescop e data taken with the Isaac Newton Group ING of

optical telescop es on La Palma the m Kapteyn JKT m Newton INT and m Herschel WHT

telescop es The data are physically stored on tap es at RGO Royal Greenwich Observatory Cambridge

UK The observation log has entries as of April and is searchable online through the

ARCQUERY software at Cambridge UK SET HOST RLESIS login as ESIS select menu option

answer CAVAD and login as ARCQUERY Alternatively telnet to gxvgastcamacuk

and login as arcquery For further information contact E Zuiderwijk at ejzmailastcamacuk

References Raimond and Van Diep en Raimond Zuiderwijk et al

ROSAT

ROSAT Rontgensatellit lauched in mid is a collab orative eort of Germany the UK and the

US and provides imaging sp ectral and timing information on sources in the extreme UV and soft Xray

wavebands ROSAT has p erformed an allsky Xray survey with an estimated number of detected

sources Pointed observations are ongoing from which information also on serendipitous sources

p er year is exp ected Three centers NASAHEASARC see x LDS Leicester and MPE Garching

provide access to observation logs and to the public data after a proprietary p erio d of one year

Access to ROSAT data and other ROSATrelated information is available by anonymous FTP

svcmpegarchingmpgde The directory archivedata contains observations ordered by to rosat

identier

Access to the ROSAT archive for Starlink users is also available from the Leicester Database

System LDS via DECNet SET HOST RLESIS login as ESIS select option answer LTXDB

and login as XRAY A data request form is available from this no de via DECNet as the le LTVAD

DISKROSATROLOCPUBLICARCHIVEREQUESTFORM A User Guide for the UK ROSAT Data

guidetex Contact S Archive is available via anonymous FTP from darcstarleacukrosatuser

Sembay ssestarleacuk or M Watson mgvstarleacuk

Data from ROSATs Wide Field Camera WFC are available from the Space Data Center at RAL

UK see D Giaretta and E Dunford References Zimmermann and Harris Zimmermann

Paul Voges Zimmermann et al Sembay and Watson UK ROSAT

Electronic Newsletter subscription requests to julostarleacuk

Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope Archive

This archive contains all of the raw data ever taken with the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope

WSRT an ap erture synthesis telescop e of antennas of m diameter in The Netherlands The data

are physically stored on tap es at the Netherlands Foundation for Radio Astrononomy NFRA Dwingelo o

The Netherlands The observation log contains entries as of April and is searchable online

with the same software ARCQUERY as for the La Palma archive see x Access is via telnet

to rzmvxnfranl login as arcquery For further information contact E Raimond at

exrnfranl References Raimond Zuiderwijk et al

Lunar and Planetary Institute

The databases of the Lunar and Planetary Institute LPI are available by telnet to cassjscnasagov

login as cass with password online The LPI Center for Information and Research

Services provides resources on geology geophysics astronomy and astrophysics The available les

include catalogs of journal holdings b o oks and maps a bibliography of the lunar and planetary literature

from on and an index to the Benchmarks in Geology Series The system is menu driven For

comments and questions contact D Bigwoo d bigwoodlpijscnasagov Also note that ESA issues

the Solar System News edited by the Planetary and Space Science Division PSS Contact K Wenzel

at kwenzelestecbitnet

Solar Data

The National Geophysical Data Center NGDC oers numerous data sets on diskette or CDROM

contact infomailngdcnoaagov The two most extensive online databases of solar data are the

Space Environment Lab oratory SEL database and the Solar Terrestrial Dispatch STD service These

are comprised mostly of optical data geophysical and solar indices are rep orts Xray activity and so

on The STD also contains at least one radio datum the cm ux value For further information

contact D Sp eich dspeichselvaxselbldrdocgov SEL or C Oler olerrhoulethca STD

Solar Maximum Mission SMM data are available from the Space Data Center SDC at Rutherford

Appleton Lab oratoires RAL UK and various NASA solar data sets are available via the NSSDC

x Data are stored oline and copied by sp ecial request onto disk to b e transferred to a users home

computer The electronic Newsletter SolarNews is published monthly and can b e subscrib ed to by sending

email to SOLAR EDITOR The Europ ean Physical So ciety issues the Europ ean Solar Physics

Newsletter once or twice p er year contact R J Rutten in Utrecht at ruttenruunscfysruunl or

SOLARRRUTTEN ESA issues the Solar System News edited partly by the Solar and Heliospheric Division

SHS Contact A Pedersen at apederseestecbitnet The Japanese Data Center SolarTerrestrial

Environment Lab oratory STELAB issues the STEP GBRSC NEWS send subscription requests to

gbsrcstelabnagoyauacjp

Distributed Databases

The fact that each data archive has its own software user interface and storage format makes the use

of many dierent databases dicult for the standard user Therefore new interfaces have b een established

which allow uniform access to very dierent databases stored even in geographically dierent places So far

two such systems are available ADS in the United States and ESIS in Europ e

Astrophysics Data System

ADS Astrophysics Data System is NASAs principal online research facility and is a research to ol

that is intended to make access to data and information convenient and easy for the science user The ADS

uses an interface that allows its users to make queries based on a multitude of astronomical data sets that

are physically lo cated in dierent lo cations but available for querying in a uniform way regardless of how

the data sets are organized and indep endent of where they are actually lo cated This lib erates the users

from learning dierent access metho ds The ADS includes to ols for data visualization once these data have

b een retrieved A set of database management functions is available for manipulating the retrieved tables

of ob jects which can b e written to les in several formats including ASCI I and FITS These formats allow

data obtained via ADS to b e imp orted into astronomical data analysis systems such as IRAF AIPS or

MIDAS The ADS also includes visualization to ols that allow users to make D plots of one table column

versus another

Registration forms to access ADS may b e obtained from the ADS user supp ort at

adscuadscoloradoedu Apart from access to many other services which are describ ed separately in the

present pap er the ADS Release v of January provides access to over catalogs including over

radio source catalogs and over abstracts searchable with complex algorithms also see x for

access to abstracts via other services

Further information ab out ADS is available via their WWW home page URL

httpadswwwharvardeduadswwwadshomepghtml A number of ADS services are available

directly through the WWW and access through this metho d is typically faster easier to use

and do es not require registration The ma jority of the catalogs can b e accessed at URL

httpadswwwharvardeducatalog servicehtml The ADS Abstract Service is available via

the URL httpadswwwharvardeduabstract servicehtml Other ADS services available via the

WWW are listed at URL httpadswwwharvardeduads serviceshtml References Weiss and Go o d

Giovane Murray et al Kurtz Kurtz et al Eichhorn

European Space Information System

ESIS Europ ean Space Information System aims at providing the user with a set of to ols to access

exchange and handle information from a great variety of sources including space mission archives databases

of scientic results bibliographical references white and yellow page directories also see x etc The

ESIS bibliographic service ESISBIB allows abstracts from the NASA RECON collection to b e retrieved

Dierent from the ADS abstract servive see x ESISBIB uses abstracts from a wider range of other

astronomyrelated topics eg geophysics computer sciences theoretical mathematics etc with altogether

abstracts ESISBIB makes use of the SIMBAD references and automatically links any SIMBAD

reference with its abstract if available in the system Access to all information on ESIS is p ossible through a homogeneous query and data managinglanguage based on a Graphical User Interface GUI Version

was released in February and client software is available for VAXVMS and SUNUNIX machines

and is installed at ab out sites Access to ESIS is via telnet to esisesrinesait or

or SET HOST ESIS Login as astronomy with password evalme The user will b e

required to register on rst login and identify himherself in subsequent sessions ESIS is also available on

the WWW via the URL httpmesisesrinesaithtmlesishtml Send queries to ESISISDHELP

or isdhelpmailesrinesait

ESIS NEWS is a newsletter to which one may subscrib e send requests to

ESISISDHELP It is available also via anonymous FTP as a color Postscript le

mesisesrinesaitpubesisnewsletteresisnewsps References Albrecht

Giommi and Ansari ab

Plate Catalogs Digital Optical Sky Surveys and Finding Charts

Many relevant contributions on this matter can b e found in Digitized Optical Sky Surveys MacGillivray

and Thomson in the newsletters of the IAU Working Group on Wideeld Imaging contact

the editor H T MacGillivray at hmgstarroeacuk for copies and in the pro ceedings of the IAU

Symp osium MacGillivray et al

Plate Catalogs

There are many observatories keeping archives of their plate materials Lists of such observatories

have recently b een compiled Tsvetkov and Tsvetkova Dluzhnevskaya and some are available

electronically on request to tsvetkovbgearnbitnet

The UK Schmidt ESO Schmidt and AAT Plate Catalogs

An extensive photographic plate library is maintained at the Royal Observatory of Edinburgh ROE

It contains some original plates taken with the UK Schmidt Telescope UKST in Australia some

original plates taken with older telescop es of ROE and copies of all ma jor photographic sky surveys

A complete catalog of all plates taken with the UK Schmidt Telescope is accessible via DECNet SET

HOST REVAD or RLESISREVAD or through telnet to starroeacuk Login as user UKSCAT no

password is required

Plate catalogs for the AngloAustralian Telescope AAT and ESO Schmidt Telescope are also

maintained Note that the AAT catalog do es not include digitally recorded observations To access either

of these catalogs pro ceed as for the UKST catalog replacing the login name by either AATCAT for the AAT

catalog or ESOCAT for the ESO Schmidt catalog and follow the instructions For further information

contact ROE sta ukstustarroeacuk on Internet or REVAD UKSTU on DECNet

Digital Optical Sky Surveys

The digitization of several largescale optical sky surveys the Palomar and ESOSERC atlases has

b een completed in recent years using highp erformance platescanning machines The raw scan data are

so bulky that remote access to this data is still prohibitive However the ob ject catalogs extracted from

these scans are b eing made accessible over the network An overview of the various pro jects is given by

MacGillivray and Thomson

Automated Plate Measuring Machine

The Automated Plate Measuring Machine APM is lo cated at the Institute of Astronomy Cambridge



UK It has b een used to scan the POSSI survey plates at galactic latitudes ab ove jbj Both colors

were scanned and ob jects crossidentied so that color information is available so far unique in allsky

surveys for a matched ob ject catalog of well over million ob jects down to m in blue O and

m in red E At this time no copies of the entire catalog are distributed but p otential users will b e



given access to smaller subsets for their own use The northern hemisphere catalog ab ove declination is

available for routine interrogation and the southern hemisphere catalog based on UKST B and R plates is

j

ab out half complete and also available A captive account for remote catalog interrogation can b e accessed

via telnet to login as user catalogues and follow the instructions Contact M Irwin

mikemailastcamacuk or R McMahon rgmmailastcamacuk Reference McMahon and

Irwin Irwin Maddox and McMahon

COSMOS

COSMOS COordinates Sizes Magnitudes Orientations and Shap es is a plate scanning machine at



the Royal Observatory Edinburgh which has b een used to scan the whole southern sky DEC

from the I I IaJ and Short Red Surveys and has led to an ob ject catalog of several hundred million ob jects

During public access to the catalog will b e provided through the AngloAustralian Observatory AAO

cataloguelis from the directory aaoeppaaogovauaao obs Drinkwater Retrieve the le cosmos

or contact M Drinkwater mjdaaocbnuaaogovau A new digitization of the southern sky

survey using the Sup erCOSMOS machine will give an even b etter quality ob ject database which is

planned to b e made available on CDROM by Contact H T MacGillivray hmgstarroeacuk

References Yentis et al MacGillivray

ST ScI Guide Star Plate Scans

Digitizations of b oth the QuickV and the POSS E and O plates and ESOI I IaF red plates limiting

magnitude is and resp ectively are available in a near online manner to lo cal ST ScI users or any

visitor to ST ScI Compressed versions of the southern survey scans are available on a set of CDROMs

since while the images from the northern POSSE red plates will b e distributed on CDROMs

in early In addition to this set of CDROMs with a compression factor of another set of

CDROMs will b e pro duced with a compression factor of This latter one to b e available in will

b e useful mainly for educational purp oses and for amateurs and will b e sold by the ASP For other optical

sky surveys b eing digitized at ST ScI see the list by McLean Reference Lasker Postman editorial note in PASP

The scanning of the rst plates of the POSSI I survey has b egun at ST ScI while the ob ject catalog is

b eing prepared at Caltech see Weir and Djorgovski Weir et al The pro ceedings of the IAU

Symp osium Astronomy from WideField Imaging H T MacGillivray et al provides more

information

Minnesota Automated Plate Scanner

A digitization of the POSSI E and Osurvey plates was also p erformed with the Automated

Plate Scanner APS at the Astronomy Department of University of Minnesota So far all plates E



and O have b een scanned for jbj All of the images detected on both E and O plate are b eing

entered in a catalog with stellar ob jects and a few times galaxies This catalog is available

at URL httpisisspaumneduhomepageapshtml Ob ject catalogs for some Palomar plates have

b ecome available as ADS catalogs see Contact address C Cornuelle at apsapsspaumnedu

References Pennington et al Aldering et al

Finding Charts

Finding charts may b e used for lo cating suitable guide stars for a particular telescop e for transparent

overlays to nd ob jects on Schmidt survey plates and for visualization purp oses when crosscorrelating

catalogs The largest catalog of stars currently available for this purp ose is the ST ScI Guide Star Catalog

GSC which is available on CDROM from the ASP It contains p ositions which are precise to b etween

00 00

and Note however that this catalog is not magnitudelimited but that the selection of stars has

b een carried out so as to provide a homogeneous density of guide stars over the sky The EXOSAT and

SIMBAD databases see x and others eg the GASP package in IRAFSTSDAS or STELLA which

is describ ed b elow allow guide stars to b e selected from userdened areas of the sky A p o cket version

MB of the GSC has b een pro duced by PreiteMartinez and Ochsenbein

SKYMAP is a computer program which pro duces maps of arbitrary p ortions of the sky in a variety of

pro jections and co ordinate systems Over the past years it has b een used to pro duce nding charts for

very dierent purp oses It can display multiple source catalogs including the HST Guide Star Catalog as

well as solar system ob jects with astrometric accuracy SKYMAP can b e tuned to a sp ecic task using an

ASCI I parameter le which controls how information is displayed on any Tektronixcompatible graphics

display or hardcopy device The program contains a variety of interactive graphic and image pro cessing

features and has b een p orted to a variety of computer systems The program is available by anonymous FTP

from cfaharvardedu in the pubgsc directory Contact D Mink minkcfaharvardedu

for an illustrated manual of the program Reference Mink

Other packages to pro duce nding charts from the GSC have b een developed eg by Megevand

Smirnov and Malkov and Malkov and Smirnov Finding charts based on the SAO

star catalog can b e pro duced with the CHART option within the Starlink software package Allan SAO

star charts as well as images of the surroundings of galaxies from POSSI can also b e generated

using LEDA see x Preview images of galaxies from the Surface Photometry Catalogue of the

ESOUppsala Galaxies Laub erts and Valentijn are available through the STARCAT interface see

x

SkyView is a facility available over the net which allows users to retrieve data from public allsky

surveys conveniently The user enters the p osition and size of the region desired and the catalogs

desired and the data is extracted and formatted for the user SkyView handles co ordinate conversions

and provides the user with data in the desired co ordinate system A description of SkyView is in

the SkyView Users Guide and SkyView Design do cument b oth available via anonymous FTP in

skviewgsfcnasagovpubdoc SkyView also has extensive internal help available Access to SkyView

is via telnet to legacygsfcnasagov login as user xray No password is required but when you rst

log in you will b e asked for information to set up your own user le area To start SkyView type skyview

and you will start up the SkyView GUI user interface An article on SkyView will b e app earing in the

next issue of Legacy the Journal of the High Energy Astrophysics Archive Research Center HEASARC

A scaled down WWW version is available as the URL httpskviewgsfcnasagovskyviewhtml

For questions or problems with SkyView contact K Scollick scollickskviewgsfcnasagov or T

McGlynn mcglynngrosscgsfcnasagov Reference McGlynn White and Scollick

STELLA is a chart generator supp orting access to the GSC SAO PPM IRAS and other catalogs

These are accessed through STARCAT see x STELLA is available to users at ESO contact B

Pirenne at bpirenneesoorg

Bibliographical Services and Preprints

Until recently bibliographic services were only available on a feeforuse basis Overviews of the

available services were previously given by ReyWatson Watson and more recently by

Davenhall cd The commercial or feeforuse bibliographic databases available via the network

include INSPEC SPIN PHYS STN and Dialog ideally your lo cal librarian should b e the exp ert in access

to and use of these facilities A number of bibliographic and other information services are available on the

net at no charge however Some of these are describ ed b elow

Bibliographic Services

Project STELAR

STELAR STudy of Electronic Literature for Astronomical Research is a pro ject that NASA has

undertaken to develop online access to b oth abstracts and full text for much of the recent astronomical

literature Abstracts are b eing provided from NASAs RECON system It provides abstracts back to

the mids but even for the p erio d covered systematically onwards a complete coverage of

any of the sources is not guaranteed The pages of the ApJ ApJS AJ PASP and AA are b eing

scanned b eginning with issues from with the plan to make the pages available as bitmaps The

rst service to b e oered by STELAR is access to journal abstracts AAS meeting abstracts and the

AAS Job Register Access is provided by a WAIS Wide Area Information Service server Details are

provided in the Octob er issue of the AAS Newsletter The pro ject STELAR WWW homepage

homepagehtml For more information send email to is httphypatiagsfcnasagovSTELAR

stelarinfohypatiagsfcnasagov References Van Steenberg Van Steenberg et al and Warnock et al

Astrophysics Data System Abstract Service

The ADS see x abstract database contained abstracts as of Octob er Five

astronomicallyrelated categories of the NASA STI database are used to select relevant abstracts The data

include abstracts from all ma jor journals many minor journals NASA rep orts and many PhD theses

Users can query by author ob ject name keywords words in the title and words in the abstract text Logic

within and b etween these elds can b e changed and the imp ortance of a given word is weighted based on

the frequency of that word in the database The resulting list is ranked by how closely the pap er matches

the query From this list one can obtain all of the information contained in the ADS abstract database

including the bibliographic co de publication date category title authors author aliations keywords

and abstract text Query feedback capability is provided which uses the results of one query to form

another

Collab oration with SIMBAD see x has enabled ADS to provide the capability of

searching by ob ject name and references from SIMBAD are correlated with those in the ADS

abstract database Access to the ADS abstract service is available on the WWW at URL

servicehtml httpadswwwharvardeduabstract

Lunar and Planetary Institute

The Lunar and Planetary Institute oers a bibliographic service which can b e accessed by telnet to

cassjscnasagov Login as user cass with password online

UnCover

UnCover is a database of tables of contents of over journals including ApJ AA AJ ApJS

MNRAS Nature PASP and Science In late it included more than articles and over

articles are added annually It can b e accessed by telnet to paccarlorg or databasecarlorg

and oers keyword searches for article titles or authors Data ingest started in September and the

rst year of complete coverage is The contents pages of an individual journal issue can b e viewed

by volume and number and further details can b e obtained on individual articles Copies of all retrieved

articles can b e ordered by FAX only for a charge indicated by the database A telnet connection to

paccarlorg also allows one to access other library databases and browse the library catalogs of several

North American libraries Send inquiries to helpcarlorg or databasecarlorg

Abstracts and Indices of Astronomical Journals

The Center for Astrophysics provides online access to the contents pages of the ApJ ApJS AJ and

PASP as well as to the abstracts of articles that have b een submitted to the ApJ Letters Both services

are available via telnet to cfaNharvardedu where N or or SET HOST to DECNet no de

CFAn n as ab ove To review titles of pap ers login as user apjaj To see the ApJ Letters abstracts login

as user aplett Both logins provide simple instructions on how to use the facilities PASP abstracts and

ToCs are available via anonymous FTP to stsciedupasp via Gopher to stsciedu and on the WWW

at httpcdswebustrasbgfrCDShtml

Following an agreement with the Editors of Astronomy Astrophysics the CDS provides access to

the abstracts from this journal starting in January These abstracts are made available four weeks

b efore the publication of the corresp onding issue The abstracts can b e viewed and retrieved on the WWW

at URL httpcdswebustrasbgfrAbstracthtml They are also available through anonymous FTP

from the directory cdsarcustrasbgfrpubabstract A WAIS server is in preparation Send remarks

and comments to questionsimbadustrasbgfr

The NED database see x is systematically entering the abstracts of pap ers of extragalactic

interest from ve ma jor journals AA AJ ApJ MNRAS and PASP complete since the IAU

Circulars since and Soviet Astronomy now Astronomy Rep orts and PASJ complete since

Acta Astronomica Archive

The journal Acta Astronomica Poland keeps an electronic archive of its recently published pap ers

They can b e retrieved via anonymous FTP to no de siriusastrouwedupl Papers are

of volumeauthor page eg actakal where stored in sub directories named actayear

author is an abbreviation of the rst authors last name app ended with the starting page of the pap er

see also Acta Astr issue Editorial

Preprint Services

The AstroWeb Consortium x maintains a list of online preprint services of interest to astronomers

Some of the ma jor facilities are describ ed in more detail b elow

Los Alamos National Laboratory

A fully automated bulletin b oard for preprints is available at Los Alamos National Lab oratory To

get information on its use send the word HELP in the sub ject eld of a message to hepthxxxlanlgov

Information on subscribing accessing etc will b e automatically returned Access by anonymous FTP is

also p ossible Typically pap ers are available each month

CERN

The Europ ean Centre for Nuclear Research Geneva supp orts a preprint server Via WWW use

address httpdarssrvcernch provides access to hundreds of sub directories each asso ciated with one

or a few institutes An X Windows based access mechanism is also supp orted Refer to van Herwijnen for details of this

SISSA

Fully automated bulletin b oards for preprints in astronomy and astrophysics are available at SISSA

International School for Advanced Studies Trieste Italy Preprints can b e submitted and retrieved

It is also p ossible to subscrib e to a daily distribution list containing authors and abstracts of the

pap ers submitted to the bulletin b oard The service is op erated by listserver software at the address

A

astrophbabbagesissait Preprints are mostly in T XL T X format but Postscript

E E

format as well as compression andor enco ding is also common Facilities to use sp ecial macros are

available and gures in Postscript format may also b e submitted Anonymous FTP access is also p ossible

For further details instructions disclaimers etc send mail with a sub ject line saying help to the address

given ab ove The same host also supp orts abstract services for other elds of physics

Preprint Lists from NRAO and ST ScI

The libraries of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory NRAO and the Space Telescope Science

Institute ST ScI co op erate in pro ducing lists of preprints received The lists are distributed electronically

every two weeks by the librarians of ST ScI and NRAO see b elow Both preprint lists are also available

through WAIS

STEPsheet Space Telescope Exhibited Preprints is a list of all preprints received during the

last two weeks at the ST ScI and is prepared by the ST ScI librarian Sarah StevensRayburn It is

delivered by electronic mail and subscription requests should b e sent to librarystsciedu Each list

presently contains well over titles Note that the preprints themselves are not distributed by the

ST ScI librarian and must b e requested from the individual author The full current ST ScI database

contains everything received in the last several years along with all pap ers received since and not

yet published It is searchable online by connecting to stlibstsciedu and logging in

as stlib Note that VT keypad emulation is required to use the EDT editor for searching Both the

current ST ScI database and the full database of all preprints received since are searchable via WAIS as

stscipreprintdbsrc and stscioldpreprintdbsrc in the WAIS directoryofservers These

les are also available on WWW from the librarys homepage httpsesamestsciedulibraryhtml

For additional information contact librarystsciedu

The RAPsheet Radio Astronomy Preprints is a listing of all preprints received in the Charlottesville

library of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in the preceding two weeks It is meant to serve

as an alert service only the NRAO library do es not copy or distribute the preprints listed Interested

p ersons should request copies of preprints from the authors The unRAPsheet is a listing of pap ers which

app eared previously on the RAPsheet for which citations have b een added in the preceding two weeks

The tables of contents of all incoming journals and meeting pro ceedings are scanned in order to nd

citations and up date the records The RAPsheet is p osted to the sciastro Usenet group and the full

database is available via anonymous FTP in the pubrapsheet directory on polarisnraoedu and is

up dated once every two weeks A database of preprints received along with their added citations from

forward including unpublished ones since is also searchable using WAIS The necessary source

le is polarisnraoedupubrapsheetnraorapssrc Please address any questions comments or

corrections regarding the RAPunRAPsheets to librarynraoedu

Astrolib

Astrolib is an email distribution for astronomy librarians whose purp ose is to share relevant information

widely and rapidly Astrolib was b orn out of the desire expressed at IAU Collo quium Wilkins and

StevensRayburn to continue the valuable exchange of information b egun there Astrolib messages

vary widely in content including information on diculttond and noncommercial items b oth print

and nonprint information on publication problems or defective journal issues duplicate items oered to

other libraries rep orts from conference attendees rep orts on ongoing pro jects eg the IAU Thesaurus

see x questions ab out technical library matters and information on resource sharing E Bouton of

the National Radio Astronomy Observatory acts as manager and mo derator for the Astrolib distribution

She receives and redistributes all messages editing them and combining them as necessary or convenient

Information ab out librarians email addresses is regularly and actively solicited by the manager and by

other librarians In late there were p eople from countries receiving Astrolib messages For

further information contact E Bouton librarynraoedu

OnLine Library Card Catalogs

ST ScI Space Telescope Science Institute oers public access to its library catalog Telnet to

stlibstsciedu and login as user stlib no password and follow the menu A user guide is available on

request from librarystsciedu

The contents of the ESO libraries at Garching b ei M unchen and La Silla can b e browsed remotely

Access is via telnet to libhosthqesoorg login as user library Two user guides are available The

ESO Libraries Online Catalogue in a Nutshell and The ESO User Guide to the OnLine Catalogue

Both are available from the ESO Library in Garching esolibesoorg Reference ESO Messenger

p

The card catalogs of hundreds of libraries including the Library of Congress which can b e accessed via

telnet to locislocgov are available over the net Lo ok into the directory ftpuntedupublibrary

The UnCover system x also provides access to several larger US libraries not sp ecialized in

astronomy

Electronic Publishing

Introductions to this wide and growing eld were recently given by Heck a Heck b and in

the Newsletter of the American Astronomical So ciety No Octob er Sp ecial Insert The rst and

last references discuss the prosp ects of future directions for electronic publishing the standards for text

editors page scanning etc

Below we list the currently available macro packages for preparation of pap ers for ma jor astronomical

journals

ApJ AJ PASP These journals encourage the use of the AAST X package available via FTP To

E

obtain details on the retrieval and installation of the current version send an empty message to

aastexinstructblackholeaasorg

AA Send email to svservdhdspribitnet with either the command send texplainpaazip

A

or send texlatexlaazip in the main b o dy of the message to receive the T X or L T X markups

E E

for pap ers in Astronomy and Astrophysics

MNRAS Macros for electronic pap ers to b e submitted to MNRAS are obtainable via anonymous

FTP to texacuk The T X les are in texarchivemacrosplaincontribmnras and the

E

A

L T X les are in texarchivemacroslatexstylescontribmnras

E

ApSS Prosp ective authors for Astrophysics and Space Science should request a T X macro from

E

the editor Kluwer Academic Publishers at editdeptwkapnl

Dictionaries Thesauri Directories Meetings and Jobs

Dictionaries and Thesauri

The Second Dictionary of the Nomenclature of Celestial Objects has just app eared Lortet Borde and

Ochsenbein ab Authors of surveytype source lists are strongly encouraged to check that designations

of their ob jects do not clash with previous namings and are otherwise commensurate with recommendations

on nomenclature An online installation of the Interactive Dictionary of Acronyms is provided by telnet

to simbadustrasbgfr login as info no password The command info cati ACR will

then provide information on the over acronyms ACR of which over are also recognized by SIMBAD

The command info l cati ACR provides more details on a given acronym Reference Lortet Borde

and Ochsenbein ab

The dictionary StarBriefs maintained by A Heck Strasb ourg is available and searchable via

WWW under URL httpcdswebustrasbgfrCDShtml It currently comprises ab out

abbreviations acronyms contractions and symbols from astronomy and space sciences as well as related

elds Astronomers are invited to consult this dictionary to avoid assigning an acronym that has b een used

previously Reference Heck

On b ehalf of the IAU several librarians of large astronomical institutions have b een working

since on the compilation of a thesaurus of astronomical terms The rst version was

distributed in pap er form to various observatories and is now available electronically in the directory

thesaurus There are versions for three dierent op erating systems MSDOS aaoeppaaogovaulib

Macintosh and Unix The thesaurus will b e essential in many resp ects eg to aid authors in b etter

selection of keywords for their pap ers and to aid librarians in b etter classication of publications It will

also b e used as a basis for sophisticated bibliographical search algorithms using the full text of pap ers

Kurtz et al also see x

To allow searching and classication of nonEnglish literature a French German Italian and Spanish

version of the primary terms is b eing worked on The second draft version of this MultiLingual Supplement

to The Astronomy Thesaurus has b een distributed in May For their own b enet in future literature

searches all astronomers are invited to check the terms in their resp ective elds of sp ecialization and make

suggestions to R Shobbro ok librarian at AAO libaaoeppaaogovau References Shobbro ok and Shobbro ok a b

Directories

Reviews of Astronomical Directories were given by Heck and Heck c

A few years ago C Benn and R Martin underto ok the task of collecting email addresses of individual

astronomers in a single ASCI I table The table is arranged in ve columns name institution network

electronic address and date co de the latter indicating when up date information was last received from a

given institution and up dates are released every year They are available via anonymous FTP in three les

lo cated at ftpastcamacukguideASTRO The same directory also contains some useful do cuments

on electronic mail and T X macros to print the RGO directory This list of individual email addresses

E

is ASTROPERSONSLIS and the current version of April contains entries of which

are on the Internet Alternative email addresses for observatories and astronomy departments are given

in le ASTROPLACESLIS Postal addresses are given in le ASTROPOSTALLIS Requests for copies

of these les corrections and additional information for inclusion in the next edition can also b e sent to

emailmailastcamacuk or directly to C Benn crblpveingiaces

The dictionary StarGuides maintained by A Heck Strasb ourg is available and searchable via WWW

under URL httpcdswebustrasbgfrCDShtml It comprises practical information on asso ciations

so cieties scientic committees agencies organizations etc in astronomy space sciences and related

elds Currently ab out items from countries are oered with information on p ostal and electronic

addresses phone and FAX numbers sta activities geographical co ordinates of observing sites awards or

prizes granted etc StarGuides sup ersedes the b o ok Astronomy Space Sciences and Related Organizations

of the World ASpScROW For additional information contact A Heck heckcdsxbustrasbgfr

References Heck b

The Unix commands whois and netfind are b oth valuable to ols for tracking down network contacts

Both may b e accessed by going to Phone Books on most Gopher servers

Astronomical Meetings

E Bryson Librarian at the CanadaFranceHawaii Telescope Corp oration in Kamuela Hawaii has

b een compiling a list of forthcoming astronomical meetings to which one can subscrib e electronically by

request to librarycfhthawaiiedu Each mailing has the new meetings marked with an asterisk

Bryson do es her b est to achieve completeness for the new meetings but clearly relies on timely information

from the meeting organizers The current listing of astronomy meetings is available via anonymous

FTP from the le ftpcfhthawaiiedupublibrarymeetingsdoc as well as on the WWW at URL

httpcadcwwwdaonrccameetingsmeetingshtml

Jobs

The American Astronomical So ciety oers its monthly list of job op enings in astronomy the Job

Register by anonymous FTP from the directory blackholeaasorgjobsjobreg Note that usually

only the latest month is kept as an online le Contact ssavoyblackholeaasorg if you want to b e on the mailing list

STARJOBS is an electronic notice b oard maintained at the Rutherford Appleton Lab oratory and

sp onsored by the Europ ean Astronomical So ciety EAS Telnet to starrlacuk or SET HOST RLSTAR

and login as starjobs You will enter a hierarchical help library at the subtopic called JOBS To read a job

notice type the rst few characters of the title of the notice and follow with a carriage return Note that

there is no facility for mailing back the notices to you For lo cal hardcopies it is b est to keep a log of your

session or cut and paste to extract text See the EAS Newsletter No Jan for more details

Under the URL httpchroniclemeritedu users can nd an electronic listing of academic job

op enings in all elds including astronomy This service is provided by the Chronical of Higher Education

and contains primarily but not exclusively op enings in the United States

Astronomical Software

An article by Feigelson and Murtagh discusses publicly available astronomical software and

numerical libraries and oers additional hints ab out using the network An example of one of these services

is the no de netlibresearchattcom which will send any one of a number of numerical algorithms up on

of routine Send a message saying send index to see receipt of an email message of the form send name

what is available A similar service for statistical software is available from statlibtemperstatcmuedu

An Astronomical Software Directory Service has b een initiated by the second of the present authors

Hanisch Payne and Hayes The ob jective of this pro ject is to provide astronomers with the ability

to search for certain types of algorithms applications programs or utilities across the many software

packages in use in the community Users will b e able to read do cumentation learn ab out software and

hardware requirements for the co de and get p ointers to anonymous FTP archives where co de may b e

retrieved

Many of the data analysis packages used in the astronomy community are available in FTP archives A

table of such systems is given b elow Note that some groups require that you make previous arrangements

with them in order to retrieve their software although patches are usually freely available TABLE GOES HERE

Information ab out the FITS Flexible Image Transport System data format standard is also available

online The NSSDC provides the NASA description of the FITS standard on nssdcagsfcnasagov

More FITSrelated do cuments sample data test les and a log of the transactions in

the Usenet newsgroup sciastrofits are available on fitscvnraoedu Most of the

les can also b e found on ftphosthqesoorg A library of IO routines for reading and

writing FITS les has b een developed by Bill Pence at HEASARC lo ok in the directory pubfitsio on

tetragsfcnasagov or send email to pencetetragsfcnasagov

At Penn State University the Statistical Consulting Center for Astronomy has recently b een created see

the directory ftpstatpsuedupubscca or the URL httpwwwstatpsuedusccahomepagehtml

Pointers to other software packages of interest to astronomers are listed within the MediaTheque

pro ject of CDS see URL httpcdswebustrasbgfrCDShtml Heck a

Other Information Systems and Services

ATNF Australia Telescope National Facility maintains the Australia Telescope a radio interferometer

at Narrabri Observing prop osals and do cumentation on this facility can b e obtained via anonymous FTP

from les in the directory atnfcsiroaupubatnfdocs A README le in this directory contains

further details

ESO Europ ean Southern Observatory has all press releases including accompanying

photographs lists of all preprints some full preprints continually up dated weather images of

South America and Europ e instrument information and so on available through its WWW URL

httpwwwhqesoorgesohomepagehtml

IAU Circulars are p osted on various electronic bulletin b oards Contact addresses are

marsdencfaharvardedu or greencfaharvardedu

IRAM Institut de Radioastronomie MillimetriqueGrenoble France oers an electronic newsletter

containing do cumentation on the IRAM telescop es on Pico Veleta Granada Spain and the radio

interferometer on Plateau de Burre near Grenoble and on reduction software les for prop osal

preparation etc For details use anonymous FTP to retrieve the le distnewsletterREADME on no de

irauxiramfr or send email to newsserviramfr with only the word HELP in the

b o dy of the mail If you want to b e notied when a new newsletter b ecomes available send a message to

iramusersrequestiramgrenetfr with the one word SUBSCRIBE in the b o dy of the message For

further questions send email to Rob ert Lucas at lucasiramfr or lucasiramfrbitnet

The La Palma Observatories Observatorio del Ro que de los Muchachos distribute an electronic

newsletter the Isaac Newton Group La Palma Information Bulletin Its purp ose is to keep the

community of users of the optical telescop es on La Palma Canary Islands Spain informed of the actual

situation on the mountain top Distribution is by email only For subscriptions send your email address

to bulletiningiaces or for UK users to dxccastroastcamacuk

homepagehtml NASA Headquarters maintains a WWW server at httpwwwmtpehqnasagovHQ

Of particular interest to astronomers are the anonymous FTP directories for Astrophysics which include

the full text of NASA Research Announcements and the newsletters of the Astrophysics Division the FTP

host is ftpastrophysicshqnasagov

NRAO is p erforming two sky surveys with the VLA Within the NRAO VLA Sky Survey NVSS the



whole sky north of declination is b eing mapp ed at cm The survey will run from to at an

00

angular resolution of and b e complete to a ux density limit of mJy The NVSS is b eing made as a

service to the astronomical community and the uv data and maps are b eing released via anonymous FTP

in the directory gibboncvnraoedupubnvss immediately as they are taken calibrated and mapp ed

Later there will b e CDROMs and hardcopy listings An introduction to the NVSS is also available on the

WWW at URL address httpinfoaocnraoedu Within another survey FIRST or Faint Images of



the Radio Sky at Twentycm the north Galactic cap b will b e surveyed from to at

00

cm at an angular resolution of to a ux density level of mJy References Condon Condon

et al Becker White and Helfand

NOAO National Optical Astronomy Observatory maintains several public FTP archives on no de

geminitucnoaoedu including weather weather satellite pictures noao information

ab out NOAO and preprints Postscript versions of selected NOAO preprints Past issues of the NOAO

Newsletters are available for searching via WAIS on pandoratucnoaoedu

SMTO Submillimeter Telescope Observatory Tucson USA has commissioned a m telescop e for

submm observations on Mt Graham Arizona and distributes a newsletter ab out current progress of the

pro ject Send a message to mailservgaffelasarizonaedu to receive further details on how to obtain

these newsletters

VLAIS Very Large Array Information System supp orted by the National Radio Astronomy

Observatory NRAO USA contains information ab out the VLA radio interferometer in New Mexico and

provides access to the observations log of all observations made with the VLA and also with the VLBA

Very Long Baseline Array a network of radio antennas distributed over the US Other general information

is available eg a master address list for astronomers NRAO employees email addresses etc To access

telnet to ziaaocnraoedu and login as user vlais Instructions are provided online It is

p ossible to email yourself some of the information in the system follow the instructions under MAILIT

Send queries to Carl Bignell cbignellnraoedu Reference Bignell

Weather information esp ecially for North America is provided at many sites Meteosat and other

images of Europ e Australia North America etc are up dated regularly during the day The Sources

of Meteorological Data FAQ gives information ab out images and forecasts and is available from

rtfmmitedupubusenetnewsanswersweatherdataZ Chilean weather forecasts are available via

Gopher at torteldccuchilecl log in as gopher and then choose successively Servicios

Miscelaneos Pronosticos Meteorologicos Informe Diario Direccion Meteorologica de Chile

E Bryson Librarian at the CanadaFranceHawaii Telescope Corp oration in Kamuela Hawaii is

working on a database with a WAIS client that will b e an international clearing house of observatory

manuals and the address of how to acquire them Send inquiries to her at librarycfhthawaiiedu

Conclusions

This pap er may b e the last of its kind to b e published on pap er as increasing amounts of information

are oered via network to ols like WAIS and WWW Relevant information is changing so fast that up on

failure to connect using the information given in the present pap er the reader is encouraged to use other p ointers from this article to nd the desired information

Many of the descriptions of the various systems were taken from published introductory information

provided by the system sp onsors We are grateful to A C Davenhall for providing us with his reviews prior

to publication and for his careful reading of the manuscript Many other p eople have contributed valuable

information and suggestions in alphab etical order L Benacchio P Boyce L Brotzman E Bryson

G Dulk G Eichhorn P Giommi D E Harris J Hayes A Heck G Helou F Hill K Long R Isaacman

R Jackson A de Jonge D Kester H T MacGillivray MC Marthinet W C Martin K Nakajima

M Nanni F Ochsenbein H Payne B Pirenne A Reynolds M Schmitz F Simien K Smale P L Smith

S StevensRayburn R M Shobbro ok C Stern Grant M Van Steenberg M Vazquez and M Wenger

We thank the referees E D Feigelson and D R Crabtree as well as the Editor H Bond for p ointing out

several other useful services to us H A acknowledges a research grant of CNRS and is grateful for the

hospitality he received at Instituto de Astrofsicade Canarias and Observatoire de Lyon

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A

This preprint was prepared with the AAS L T X macros v E

A URLs of Note

URLs Uniform Resource Lo cators provide the address information needed to make a link with a World

Wide Web site A p opular user interface to the WWW is NCSA Mosaic A number of lists of astronomical

resources have b een established and co ordination b etween those maintaining these lists has b een undertaken

by a group calling itself the AstroWeb Consortium Current members are Jackson CSCSTScI

Wells NRAO Ko ekemoer Mount Stromlo Egret and Heck Strasb ourg Observatory and Adorf and

Murtagh STECF The AstroWeb Consortium has formed a common resource listing and assembled

various to ols in particular automated submission pro cedures for new URLs and automated checking

pro cedures to verify that URLs still resp ond to accesses as exp ected Currently more than around

astronomicallyrelevant URLs are available At URL httpfitscvnraoeduwwwastronomyhtml

these astronomical resources are categorized under Observing Resources Data Resources Organizations

Software Resources PublicationRelated Resources PeopleRelated Resources Various Lists of Astronomy

Resources Astronomical Imagery and Miscellaneous Resources

A short list of URLs for sites which supp ort user services archive research or observing is given

b elow No guarantee can b e made that required information will b e found at these sites However the

momentum b ehind the WorldWide Web is currently very great and the information available through

Mosaic or other browsers is growing constantly in quality and quantity The WorldWide Web is

thoroughly compatible with other networkbased access mechanisms WAIS Gopher FTP telnet etc and

in fact provides a common user interface to all of these

ADS NASA Astrophysics Data System

httpadswwwharvardeduadswwwadshomepghtml

CADC Canadian Astronomy Data Center

httpcadcdaonrccaCADChomepagehtml

CDS Strasb ourg Data Center

httpcdswebustrasbgfrCDShtml

CEA Center for EUV Astrophysics

httpceaftpceaberkeleyeduHomePagehtml

CTIO NOAO Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory

httpctiosctionoaoeductiohtml

ESIS Europ ean Space Information System

httpmesisesrinesaithtmlesishtml

ESO Europ ean Southern Observatory

httpwwwhqesoorgesohomepagehtml

HEASARC High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center

httpheasarcgsfcnasagov

NASA National Aeronautics and Space Admininstration Information Services

homepagehtml httphypatiagsfcnasagovNASA

Mount Stromlo and Siding Springs

httpmeteoranueduauhomehtml

NRAO National Radio Astronomy Observatory

httpinfoaocnraoedu

NOAO National Optical Astronomy Observatories httpwwwnoaoedunoaohtml

NASA NASA Online Information

httpmosaiclarcnasagovnasaonlinenasaonlinehtml

National Solar Observatory

httpargotucnoaoedu

Planetary Data System

homehtml httpstarhawkjplnasagovpds

STECF Space Telescope Europ ean Co ordinating Facility

httpecfhqesoorgSTECFhomepagehtml

ST ScI Space Telescope Science Institute

httpstsciedutophtml

B List of Acronyms

AAO AngloAustralian Observatory

AAS American Astronomical So ciety

ADC Astronomical Data Center of NASAs NSSDC

ADS Astrophysics Data System

AEC Archive Exp osure Catalog of the Hubble Space Telescope

AIPS Astronomical Image Pro cessing System

APM Automated Plate Measuring Machine Cambridge UK

APS Automated Plate Scanner Univ Minnesota USA

ARMS Automated Retrieval Mail System of NASAADC

ASCA Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics formerly AstroD

ASCI I American Standard Co de for Information Interchange

ASP Astronomical So ciety of the Pacic

ATNF Australian Telescope National Facility

BATSE Burst and Transient Source Exp eriment on b oard CGRO

BBXRT Broad Band XRay Telescope

BICDS Bulletin dInformation du Centre de DonneesAstronomiques de Strasb ourg

Bitnet Because Its Time network

CADC Canadian Astronomical Data Center Victoria BC

CDROM Compact Disk ReadOnly Memory

CDS Centre de DonneesAstronomiques Strasb ourg Strasb ourg Data Center

CERN Europ ean Center for Nuclear Research

CfA Center for Astrophysics

CFHT CanadaFranceHawaii Telescope

CGRO Compton Gamma Ray Observatory

COBE Cosmic Background Explorer

COSMOS Co ordinates Sizes Magnitudes Orientations and Shap es ROE UK

DEC Digital Equipment Corp oration

DIRA Distributed Information Retrieval from Astronomical les

DIRBE Diuse Infrared Background Exp eriment on COBE satellite

DMR Dierential Microwave Radiometer on COBE satellite

EAS Europ ean Astronomical So ciety

EINLINE Einstein OnLine Service

EMMI ESO Multimo de Instrument

EOLS Einstein OnLine Service

ESA Europ ean Space Agency

ESIS Europ ean Space Information System

ESO Europ ean Southern Observatory

ESRIN Europ ean Space Research Institute ESA

ESTEC Europ ean Space Technolgy and Research Center ESA

EUVE Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer

EXOSAT Europ ean Xray Observatory Satellite

FAQ Frequently asked questions

FIRAS Far Infrared Absolute Sp ectrophotometer on COBE satellite

FIRST Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twentycm Survey with NRAOs VLA

FITS Flexible Image Transport System

FTP File Transfer Proto col

GASP GuideStar Astrometric Supp ort Package ST ScI

GEISHA Groningen Exp ortable Infrared System for HighResolution Analysis

GIPSY Groningen Image Pro cessing System

GRO GammaRay Observatory Compton Observatory

GSFC Go ddard Space Flight Center

GUI Graphical User Interface

HEADS High Energy Astrophysics Database Service

HEAO High Energy Astrophysics Observatory

HEASARC High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center

Hipparcos HighPrecision Parallax Collecting Satellite

HST Hubble Space Telescope

HTML Hyp ertext Markup Language

IAU International Astronomical Union

ING Isaac Newton Group of telescop es on La Palma see JKT INT and WHT

INSPEC INformation Services in Physics Electrotechnology Computers and

Control

INT Isaac Newton Telescope m mirror on La Palma

IP Internet proto col

IPAC Infrared Pro cessing and Analysis Center

IRAF Image Reduction and Analysis Facility

IRAS Infrared Astronomical Satellite

IRAM Institut de Radioastronomie Millimetrique

ISO Infrared Space Observatory

ISSA Infrared Sky Survey Atlas IRAS maps

IUE International Ultraviolet Explorer

JCMT James Clerk Maxwell Telescope Hawaii

JKT Jakobus Kapteyn Telescope m mirror on La Palma

LANL Los Alamos National Lab oratory

LDS Leicester Database System

LEDA LyonMeudon Extragalactic Database

LHEA Lab oratory for High Energy Astrophysics

LPI Lunar and Planetary Institute

MIDAS Munich Image Data Analysis System

MPE MaxPlanck Institut f urExtraterrestrische Physik Garching

MQQ multiple quick query

NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NCSA National Center for Sup ercomputing Applications

NED NASAIPAC Extragalactic Database

NFRA Netherlands Foundations for Research in Astronomy

NGDC National Geophysical Data Center

NMC NASAs Master Catalog

NODIS NSSDC Online Data and Information Service

NONA NSI OnLine Network Aid

NSI NASA Science Internet

NSSDC National Space Science Data Center

NOAO National Optical Astronomy Observatory

NRAO National Radio Astronomy Observatory

NTT New Technology Telescope ESO La Silla

NVSS NRAO VLA Sky Survey

OP Opacity Pro ject

PGC Principal Galaxy Catalogue see AAS

POSS Palomar Observatory Sky Survey

PPARC Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council UK previously SERC

PPM Positions and Prop er Motions Star Catalog

RA Right ascension

RAL Rutherford Appleton Lab oratory

RAP Radio Astronomy Preprints NRAO service

RECON REmote CONsole program by NASA STI to access their data

RGO Royal Greenwich Observatory Cambridge UK

ROE Royal Observatory Edinburgh Edinburgh UK

ROSAT Rontgensatellit

SAO Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

SCAR Starlink Catalog Access and Rep orting System

SCCA Statistical Consulting Center for Astronomy

SDC Space Data Center

SEL Space Environment Lab oratory

SERC Science and Engineering Research Council UK now PPARC

SGML Standard Generalized Markup Language

SHS Solar and Heliospheric Division

SIMBAD Set of Identications Measurements and Bibliography for

Astronomical Data

SISSA International School for Advanced Studies Trieste Italy

SMM Solar Maximum Mission

SPAN Space Physics Analysis Network

SPIN Searchable Physics Information Notices

STARCAT Space Telescope Archive and Catalog

STD Solar Terrestrial Dispatch

STECF Space Telescope Europ ean Co ordinating Facility

STELAB SolarTerrestrial Environment Lab oratory

STELAR STudy of Electronic Literature for Astronomical Research

STEP Space Telescope Exhibited Preprints

STEP SolarTerrestrial Energy Program

STI NASAs Scientic and Technical Information Program

STN Scientic and Technical information Network

ST ScI Space Telescope Science Institute Baltimore USA

SUSI Sup erb Seeing Imager ESO

TCP Transport Connection Proto col

UKIRT United Kingdom Infrared Telescope on Hawaii

UKST United Kingdom Schmidt Telescope Siding Spring New South Wales

ULDA IUE Uniform Low Disp ersion Archive

URL Uniform Resource Lo cator

VLA Very Large Array So corro New Mexico

VLAIS Very Large Array Information System

XTE Xray Timing Explorer

WAIS WideArea Information Servers

WHT William Herschel Telescope m mirror on La Palma

WSRT Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope

WWW WorldWide Web

Table Some Ma jor Astronomical Data Analysis Packages available via FTP

System Org Archive Address email contact

IRAF NOAO irafnoaoedu irafnoaoedu

STSDAS ST ScI stsciedu stsdasstsciedu

PROS CfA saoftpharvardedu proscfaharvardedu

AIPS NRAO babooncvnraoedu aipsmailnraoedu

MIDAS ESO ftphosthqesoorg midasesoorg

VISTA Lowell lowelledu vistalowelledu

FIGARO AAO aaoeppaaogovau ksaaoeppaaogovau

PGPLOT Caltech deimoscaltechedu tjpdeimoscaltechedu

IDL Astr Lib GSFC idlastrogsfcnasagov landsmanstarsgsfcnasagov