Astronomy Databases

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Astronomical Data Center Home Page
"...specializes in archiving and distributing collections of data that have been published by professional astronomers. Most of these data sets are in the form of computer-readable tables of numbers, rather than images."
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Astrophysics Data System (ADS)
"The Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is a NASA-funded project whose main resource is an Abstract Service, which includes four sets of abstracts: 1) astronomy and astrophysics, containing abstracts; 2) instrumentation, containing 577,783 abstracts; 3) physics and geophysics, containing 877,721 abstracts; and 4) Los Alamos preprint server, containing 3,851 abstracts. [as of 04/22/00] Each dataset can be searched by author, object name (astronomy only), title, or abstract text words...In addition, we have extended the abstract service to include links to the full text of articles appearing in most of the major astronomical journals.
Largest collection of online articles and abstracts on the Internet.
NASA

NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED)
"It is built around a master list of extragalactic objects for which cross-identifications of names have been established, accurate positions and redshifts entered to the extent possible, and some basic data collected. Bibliographic references relevant to individual objects have been compiled, and abstracts of extragalactic interest are kept on line. Detailed and referenced photometry, position, and redshift data, have been taken from large compilations and from the literature. NED also includes images for over 700,000 extragalactic objects from 2MASS, from the literature, and from the Digitized Sky Survey. NED's data and references are being continually updated, with revised versions being put on-line every 2-3 months."

The Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer Project
Home Page for the All-Sky Monitor (ASM) Team
"MIT is providing an All-Sky Monitor (ASM) that will scan about 80% of the sky every orbit, allowing monitoring at time scales of 90 minutes or longer, and an on board Experiment Data System (EDS) which processes the data from PCA and ASM."
Center for Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Space Environment Center (SEC) - NOAA

• SEC Data Library
  "...provides a wide variety of near-real-time and recent Space Weather data online through its Web and FTP sites."
  Groupings include: Solar ; Interplanetary ; Geomagnetic ; Near-Earth

Two Micron All Sky Survey at IPAC (2MASS)
"..., 2MASS is uniformly scanning the entire sky in three near-infrared bands to detect and characterize point sources brighter than about 1 mJy in each band, with signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) greater than 10, using a pixel size of 2.0". This will achieve an 80,000-fold improvement in sensitivity relative to earlier surveys."

• First large Incremental Release
  "...of northern hemisphere data occurred in 1999 Spring. This release covered about 2483 square degrees, i.e., ~6% of the sky."
• Second large Incremental Release
  "...of northern and southern hemisphere data in 2000 Winter. This release covers more than 19,600 square degrees, i.e., ~47% of the sky."

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