A D C E l e c t r o n i c N e w s
Published by the
Astronomical Data Center
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland, U.S.A.
Volume 9, Issue 3
July 2000
CONTENTS
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INTRODUCTION
To help our users make effective user of our services, the ADC has produced a
new ADC Scientific Users' Guide. In this issue, Kirk Borne describes this
Guide and our new ADC Demos pages that demonstrate how certain specific
scientific research projects can be enhanced through the use of ADC data
products.
Several ADC staffers were active participants at the recent "Virtual
Observatories of the Future" conference held at Caltech. Borne and Ed Shaya
describe the new Virtual Observatory initiatives and how the ADC can contribute
to them.
At the time of this writing, the impact of the U.S. Government's Office of
Management and Budget's new policy that Government web sites shall not use
"cookies" on the ADC's services is unclear. While the new policy is aimed at
heading off privacy-related complaints, cookies are commonly used to "maintain
state". That is, to identify data submissions on a series of web pages as
part of the same "session" of a given user, or to connect a server-based
"workspace" to its user/owner. The ADC uses cookies for these purposes for
some of its data visualization services. If it appears that the new policy
will disrupt one or more of the ADC's services, we will notify our users
through a special email message, and a notice on our web site.
Thanks to all those who have responded to the ADC survey. We hope to summarize
the results of that survey in our next issue.
- James E. Gass (Raytheon ITSS), Editor
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New Scientific Users' Guide and ADC Demos Go On-Line
Kirk D. Borne (Raytheon ITSS)
In an on-going effort to improve the accessibility and usefulness of
the ADC's scientific data products, we have developed two new web-based
science user services. The first is the "ADC Scientific User's Guide",
which presents a selection of sample user scenarios to guide the user
through the suite of ADC data services in order to address specific
scientific requirements or to search for specific types of astronomical
data. Most of the sample scenarios provide "good", better", and "best"
techniques for using ADC tools and services to answer the hypothetical
scientific query. It is hoped that these scenarios are representative
of the types of inquiries that our user community poses to the rich
collection of ADC data holdings and are thereby useful guides to
aid your own research projects. If you wish to request "how to"
information for another type of scenario not already represented in the
Users Guide, please forward your suggestion to our help desk at
mailto:help@adc.astro.umd.edu . You can access the ADC Scientific User's
Guide at :
http://adc.astro.umd.edu/adc/adc_science/adc-science-guide.html .
The second new service is the ADC Demos Page. This page provides links
to abstracts of conference presentations made by our ADC staff members.
The materials that comprised some of those presentations are hyperlinked
from this page to a specific DEMO page. These presentations frequently
demonstrate how certain specific scientific research projects can be
carried out and even enhanced through the use of ADC data products,
visualization tools, and on-line services. If you have specific questions
about a given presentation or demo, please contact our ADC help desk
or the author of the listed paper. In some cases, there are no specific
conference slides or poster materials available. In those cases we
provide a hyperlink to an ADC Tutorial that demonstrates how to use the
corresponding ADC data services. You can access the ADC Demos Page at :
http://adc.astro.umd.edu/adc/adc_science/adc-science-scenario-papers.html .
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ADC and Virtual Observatories of the Future
Kirk D. Borne, Edward Shaya (Raytheon ITSS)
The recently released National Academy of Sciences Decadal Survey of
Astronomy and Astrophysics for 2000-2010 strongly endorsed an NVO
(National Virtual Observatory) initiative. This reflects the
astronomical community's growing recognition of both the sheer volume
of data beginning to flood our archives and also the immense ongoing
legacy value of those data. Consequently, cross-institutional efforts
and community studies are underway to examine how best to implement an
NVO (or perhaps, Global Virtual Observatory = GVO) infrastructure, with
transfer protocols, data standards, and access agreements among
diverse, heterogeneous, and geographically distributed astronomical
data archives. The ADC data collection provides a valuable component
of that virtual observatory of the future through our rich collection
of astronomical metadata, our search-and-discovery-and-visualization
tool suite, and our leading-edge XML developments. Thus, ADC staff
members attended the recent "Virtual Observatories of the Future"
conference at Caltech (June 2000), presenting several talks and poster
papers, contributing to numerous discussion groups, and participating
in the lively intellectual exchange of ideas.
The ultimate goal of the Virtual Observatory initiatives (national and
global) is to provide every astronomer with on-line access to the rich
volumes of data and metadata that have been and will continue to be
produced by astronomical survey projects, large and small. An on-line
virtual observatory will enable researchers to dial up multi-wavelength
pixel maps or source catalogs anywhere in the sky and consequently will
allow the full research community to extract as much scientific
knowledge and value as possible from these rich "virtual sky" data
archives for decades to come.
At the meeting there were talks on the origins and current state of the
VO concept. Existing data centers presented their current efforts in
managing large data sets and in rapidly providing data to end users.
New ideas in data analysis, visualization, and the handling of very
large data sets were presented. A set of science scenarios with a VO
were presented, to indicate the science drivers and requirements that
a VO must address. The states of hardware and software (particularly
data mining) were summarized and it was established that terabyte
datasets can be considered to be "small" in this context. On the
final day, there were split sessions devoted to discussions of VO
architecture, standards, database design, and visualization. Education
and public outreach opportunities with a VO were also highlighted since
the VO provides for new and better means of displaying scientific
discoveries. J.Bredekamp (NASA) and E.Friel (NSF) presented their
agencies' views on how these IT efforts might receive funding.
Summaries were presented by A.Szalay (John Hopkins U.) and
G.Djorgovski (Caltech). More information can be found at the
conference website : http://astro.caltech.edu/nvoconf/ . A few links to
the contents of various talks and posters are already available from
this site. One can also obtain a copy of the NVO white paper from there.
The ADC has been developing tools and services for several years that
are aimed at facilitating the search, discovery, and retrieval of data
and metadata from multiple astronomical data archives. When combined
with the wealth of computer science and statistics expertise within our
own institutions, the astronomical data providers are poised to provide
the research community with seamless, transparent access to very large
(multi-terabyte) multi-wavelength multi-mission archives, thus
establishing a baseline Virtual Observatory. The opportunities for new
research projects, new discoveries, and new scientific knowledge are
profound. The ADC will continue to contribute to this VO effort and
will participate in appropriate community forums. A similar effort
is underway already in Europe through the AstroVirtel project. A
conference on "Mining The Sky" is being sponsored by the ESO, MPE, and
MPA archive groups in Garching, Germany. Information can be found at the
conference website : http://ibm-2.mpa-garching.mpg.de/~cosmo/ . ADC has
sent a representative to this conference. Look for a report in a future
ADC Newsletter.
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Newly Acquired and Updated Catalogs/Journal Tables
Gail L. Schneider (Raytheon ITSS)
The following catalogs and journal tables are currently available from the
ADC repository. The ADC gratefully acknowledges the CDS and individual
authors who have recently contributed to our repository.
See http://adc.astro.umd.edu/adc/acq_new_updated.html#new_list for direct
hyperlinks to each catalog and journal table listed.
NEW CATALOGS AND JOURNAL TABLES
ID# Abbreviated Title (First Author, Year)
Astrometric and Positional Data
1263 ACR catalog around Celestial Equator (Stone+, 1999)
Photometric Data
2228A DENIS Catalogue toward Magellanic Clouds (DCMC) (Cioni+ 2000)
2229 Sakurai's object (V4334 Sgr) in 1996-1998 (Arkhipova+ 1999)
2230 TASS Mark III photometric survey (Richmond+, 2000)
Spectroscopic Data
3204 Stellar radial velocities bibliographic catalog (Malaroda+, 2000)
Combined and Derived Data
5104 General Catalogue of Herbig-Haro Objects (Reipurth+, 1999)
5096 Catalogue of open cluster parameters from UBV-data. (Loktin+, 1996)
Nonstellar and Extended Object
7216 H-{alpha} emission regions in Southern Milky Way (Rodgers+ 1960)
7218 Southern Stars embedded in nebulosity (van den Bergh+, 1975)
High Energy Data
9028A ROSAT HRI Pointed Observations (1RXH) (ROSAT Team, 2000)
9029 ROSAT All-Sky Survey Faint Source Catalog (Voges+ 2000)
Astronomy and Astrophysics
J/A+A/349/L69 Interstellar extinction (Schultheis+, 1999)
J/A+A/357/225 Mass loss of M supergiants (Josselin+, 2000)
J/A+A/357/437 Photometry of young star groupings in spirals (Battinelli+, 2000)
J/A+A/357/471 BV and proper motions in NGC 1960 & NGC 2194 (Sanner+, 2000)
J/A+A/357/548 ubvy Photometry of magnetic CP stars (Adelman+, 2000)
J/A+A/357/572 Dust formation in WC stars (Cherchneff+, 2000)
J/A+A/357/839 AGN 2.5-11um spectroscopy (Clavel+, 2000)
J/A+A/357/1020 JHK photometry in NGC 6334 IV (Persi+, 2000)
J/A+A/358/77 Hamburg/ESO survey for bright QSOs. III. (Wisotzki+, 2000)
J/A+A/358/547 M53 variable stars V light curves (Kopacki, 2000)
J/A+A/358/553 uvby differential photometry of V578 Mon (Hensberge+, 2000)
J/A+A/358/819 BVR photometry of tidal dwarf candidates (Weilbacher+, 2000)
Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement Series
J/A+AS/140/155 Abell 496 gri photometry (Moretti+, 1999)
J/A+AS/143/357 Tuorla Quasar Monitoring (Katajainen+ 2000)
J/A+AS/143/391 ROSAT HRI catalogue of LMC X-ray sources (Sasaki+, 2000)
J/A+AS/143/405 Astrometric observations of Helene (Veiga+, 2000)
J/A+AS/143/483 IRON Project XLII. Fe XXI (Butler+, 2000)
J/A+AS/144/45 Hipparcos astrometry for 257 stars (Fabricius+, 2000)
J/A+AS/144/123 Multiline CO observations of MBM 32 (Wouterloot+, 2000)
J/A+AS/144/195 UBVRI polarimetric observations in NGC 6611 (Orsatti+, 2000)
J/A+AS/144/227 BV photometry of M 71 (Geffert+, 2000)
J/A+AS/144/481 BVRI photometry of five X-ray selected BL Lacs (Villata+, 2000)
J/A+AS/144/475 Accurate positions for 17124 galaxies (Paturel+, 2000)
J/A+AS/144/469 Delta Scuti stars revised catalog (Rodriguez+, 2000)
Astronomical Journal
J/AJ/81/807 Deprojection of the r^1/4^ law tables (Young, 1976)
J/AJ/112/407 The FIRST bright QSO survey (Gregg+, 1996)
J/AJ/117/206 LMC far-ultraviolet imaging (Brosch+, 1999)
J/AJ/117/1905 Speckle interferometry at the USNO. II. (Germain+, 1999)
J/AJ/117/2329 Spectroscopy of hot stars in the halo. III (Wilhelm+, 1999)
J/AJ/119/44 Redshifts in AWM 7 galaxy cluster (Koranyi+, 2000)
J/AJ/119/1214 Census of star clusters in the SMC (Bica+, 2000)
J/AJ/119/1225 Stroemgren photometry of Omega Cen and NGC 6397 (Hughes+, 2000)
J/AJ/119/1268 CFHT adaptive optics observations of M15 (Gebhardt+, 2000)
J/AJ/119/1389 Properties of the binary star FS Monocerotis (Lacy+, 2000)
J/AJ/119/1424 Color-temperature relations of M giants (Houdashelt+, 2000)
J/AJ/119/1448 Improved properties for cool stars (Houdashelt+, 2000)
J/AJ/119/1562 gri photometry 48 galaxy clusters (Margoniner+, 2000)
J/AJ/119/1748 WFPC 2 imaging of young LMC clusters (Keller+, 2000)
J/AJ/119/1824 Caby photometry of {Omega} Centauri (Rey+, 2000)
J/AJ/119/1901 ROTSE all-sky surveys for variable stars (Akerlof+, 2000)
J/AJ/119/2214 Photometry of Magellanic OB associations (Massey+, 2000)
J/AJ/119/2274 JK Photometry of globular clusters M15 & M56 (Ivanov+, 2000)
J/AJ/119/2282 Stromgren photometry of IC 4651 (Anthony-Twarog+, 2000)
Astrophysical Journal
J/ApJ/519/697 Molecular study of HC_3_NH^+^+e^-^ (Osamura+, 1999)
J/ApJ/521/682 Binaries in the Praesepe and Coma clusters (Abt+, 1999)
J/ApJ/525/420 UV and optical line variations in {epsilon} Persei (Gies+, 2000)
J/ApJ/525/466 Young low-mass stars and brown dwarfs in IC 348 (Luhman+, 1999)
J/ApJ/526/544 Collision strengths in S III (Tayal+, 1999)
J/ApJ/530/783 The r-process enriched giant HD 115444 (Westin+, 2000)
Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series
J/ApJS/106/1 EFAR cluster and galaxy selection (Wegner+, 1996)
J/ApJS/123/283 Library of FOE spectra of late-type stars (Montes, 1999)
J/ApJS/126/133 The FIRST bright quasar survey. II. (White+, 2000)
J/ApJS/127/1 UGRK Photometry in the Hubble Deep field region (Hogg+, 2000)
J/ApJS/127/39 Stellar and gas kinematics in early-type galaxies (Caon+ 2000)
J/ApJS/127/79 BATSE occultation catalog of Gamma-Ray sources (Ling+, 2000)
Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
J/PASP/111/812 V(RI)C Phot of Cepheids in the Magellanic Clouds (Barnes+ 1999)
Pis'ma v Astronomicheskij Zhurnal
J/PAZh/23/674 Proper motions in open cluster NGC 7063 (Glushkova+, 1997)
J/PAZh/25/764 Multicolor photometry of RY Sct (Antokhina+, 1999)
J/PAZh/25/893 Optical outbursts of the blazar 3C 345 (Belokon+, 1999)
J/PAZh/26/13 Observations of X-ray binary A0535+26/V725 Tau (Lyuty+, 2000)
UPDATED CATALOGS AND JOURNAL TABLES
Data corrected:
Photometric Data
2227 The Asiago Supernova Catalogue 1999 (Barbon+, 1999)
Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement Series
J/A+AS/142/41 SMC X-ray sources ROSAT PSPC catalogue (Haberl+, 2000)
Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series
J/ApJS/107/239 327 MHz survey of the galactic plane (Taylor+ 1996)
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