Article reposted from: http://gerry.lamost.org/blog/?p=417
Last year was the International Year of Astronomy. In addition to translating the official promotional brochure, I was encouraged by friends to write a year-long series for the magazine Amateur Astronomer, introducing famous star catalogs. The editor, Li Jian, gave this series a wonderful name: "Genealogy of the Stars." Spanning four to five hundred years and more than twenty generations of astronomers, with thousands of star catalogs, the development path is clearly visible when connected by new clues. I was often so excited by a flash of inspiration that I would hurriedly pick up my pen, only to have more questions pop up the moment I started writing... Beyond my limited accumulation of knowledge, my writing skills were not yet sufficient to command such a grand theme; it should be viewed merely as a framework index. Despite various regrets, I have finally fulfilled a wish. This is a side story to that series, introducing star catalog databases, published in the January 2010 issue of Amateur Astronomer.
When talking about star catalogs, one must mention the Strasbourg Astronomical Data Center (CDS) in France. Established in 1972, this data center brings together nearly ten thousand documented star catalogs and provides detailed query methods, making it the first choice for astronomers to obtain data. Yet, its origins are known to few...
Strasbourg is a historic city located on the banks of the Rhine. Due to its position on the border between France and Germany, it was a focal point of offense and defense when war broke out and became a bargaining chip at the negotiating table after wars ended. This gave it a complex history. The Strasbourg Observatory was born against this backdrop. After the Franco-Prussian War ended in 1871 and France was defeated, the Alsace region was annexed into the German Empire by Bismarck and managed directly by the Emperor. The new government established a university here, and the observatory was planned as a supporting facility. August Winnecke, the secretary of the German Astronomical Society and grandson-in-law of the famous Russian astronomer Friedrich Struve (one of the first to measure parallax), was invited back from the Pulkovo Observatory to serve as the first director, responsible for preparations and construction.
Soon after, a well-equipped and beautifully situated observatory became a new landmark in this ancient city. However, the good times did not last. In 1909, the First World War broke out, and Strasbourg was once again exposed to artillery fire. All observation plans were forced to stop, and the observatory was requisitioned as a wartime hospital. After the end of World War I, the German Empire collapsed, and Strasbourg re-entered the territory of France. Ernest Esclangon, from the Bordeaux University Observatory, became the first French director of the Strasbourg Observatory. His outstanding work in timekeeping led to his promotion to director of the Paris Observatory in 1930, and André Danjon took over the Strasbourg Observatory. Subsequently, World War II broke out. The Germans bypassed the Maginot Line from Belgium, and France fell quickly. Strasbourg returned to German rule intact. German astronomers attempted to restore some functions of the observatory, but the rapidly changing war situation prevented them from succeeding. After the war, Esclangon reached retirement age, and Danjon was transferred to Paris to succeed him as director of the Paris Observatory. The Strasbourg Observatory was then handed over to Pierre Lacroute from Toulouse, France. He held this position for thirty years. The Strasbourg Observatory, with its turbulent history, finally ushered in a period of stable development and was put to full use. Lacroute originally worked in the field of spectral analysis, but after coming to Strasbourg, he turned to developing astrometric techniques more suited to the observatory. He soon discovered that due to atmospheric limitations, the performance of ground-based instruments could not be fully realized. Around the 1960s, the launch of a series of Soviet satellites gave him new hope. He boldly proposed the concept of space observation, but because the technology was ahead of its time and the cost was enormous, it was not approved for a long time. Through his years of tireless promotion, more and more European astronomers recognized the value of space observation, and the launch of satellites was put on the agenda.
During the preparation process, Jean Delhaye, director of the Paris Observatory, realized the importance of star catalog data and decided to establish a European star catalog center. In 1972, the French Institut National d’Astronomie et de Géophysique (INAG) established the Center for Stellar Data (Centre de Données Stellaires, abbreviated as CDS) at the Strasbourg Observatory. It was headed by Jean Jung, a student of Delhaye who studied cross-identification of star catalogs. At that time, Intel had just released the new 8-bit 8008 processor with a clock speed of less than 1MHz, IBM’s modern hard drive design (Winchester) had not yet been commercialized, and optical character recognition (OCR) technology was just starting, with disastrous results... The difficulty of digitizing voluminous star catalog materials under such conditions can be imagined. Moreover, their data room only contained the published AGK2 catalog; other classic catalogs were still gathering dust in the corners of observatories, research institutes, and libraries in various countries. At that time, the only digitized data in the world was the SAO catalog magnetic tape just compiled by the United States for the Apollo program. Their work began on this basis...
Jung left the astronomical community shortly after completing the Catalog of Stellar Identification (CSI). At that time, the value of his work could not be fully appreciated... This was a cross-identification table including many heavyweight catalogs such as the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Star Catalog (SAO), the Henry Draper Catalogue (HD), the Cape Photographic Durchmusterung (CPC), the Astronomische Gesellschaft Katalog (AGK2/3), and the Yale Zone Catalog. It was also the prototype for the future Simbad system. Succeeding him in charge of the data center was Carlos Jaschek from the La Plata Observatory in Argentina. His parents had immigrated to Argentina in 1937 because of the Nazis, and he returned to Europe in 1973 due to the turbulent political situation in Argentina. His extensive cooperative relationships in the astronomical community injected vitality into this emerging institution, and his astronomer wife also provided significant help to the short-staffed office. With technological progress, the catalog database continued to expand, and the data collected was no longer limited to stars. The name of the data center was correspondingly changed to the Strasbourg Astronomical Data Center.
As of the writing of this article, the catalog database has collected 8,901 catalogs, of which 8,282 can be queried online (Note: because the catalog database is constantly updated, the number of catalogs changes quickly; this is for reference only). They are divided into 9 major categories, numbered with Roman numerals:
I. Astrometric Data: Mainly records the positions, coordinates, proper motions, and parallax data of stars, including 268 catalogs. Famous catalogs such as the Astronomische Gesellschaft Katalog (AGK3, I/61B), the Bonner Durchmusterung (I/122), the Yale Zone Catalog (I/141), the Hipparcos Catalogue (I/239), the Tycho-2 Catalogue (I/259), the Sixth Catalogue of Fundamental Stars (FK6, I/264), the Hubble Guide Star Catalog (GSC, I/305), and the US Naval Observatory CCD Astrograph Catalog (UCAC3, I/315) are in this directory.
II. Photometric Data: Records the magnitudes and photometric data of celestial bodies in various bands, including 265 catalogs. It includes the General Catalogue of Variable Stars (II/139B), the Sloan Digital Sky Survey photometric data SDSS-DR7 (II/294), and the Beijing-Arizona-Taipei-Connecticut (BATC) multi-color sky survey from China’s Xinglong Station Schmidt Telescope (II/262).
III. Spectroscopic Data: Records spectral observation data of celestial bodies, with 226 catalogs, such as the earliest spectral catalog—the Henry Draper Catalogue and its extension (III/1), and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey spectroscopic data (SDSS-DR6, III/255).
IV. Cross-Identifications: Contains 27 catalogs, mainly providing ID comparisons between different large catalogs (such as SAO, HD, GC, DM).
V. Combined data: (116 catalogs) Catalogs recompiled and derived based on literature and existing observation results. For example, the Yale Bright Star Catalogue (V/25) compiled from the Yale University Observatory survey results, the Strasbourg-ESO Catalogue of Galactic Planetary Nebulae (V/100), and the star catalog in the Almagest by the ancient Greek astronomer Ptolemy (V/61).
VI. Miscellaneous: Catalogs that do not fit into any other category are placed here. There are 106 catalogs. These include constellation boundary data (VI/49), lists of elemental spectral lines (VI/69), Palomar Observatory Sky Survey II plate positions (VI/114), etc.
VII. Non-stellar Objects: Contains 214 catalogs. Nebulae, star clusters, galaxies, and galaxy clusters can all be found here, as well as quasars, asteroids, and other celestial bodies. For example, the famous NGC catalog (VII/1B 1973 version, 2000 version in VII/118), and the Abell and Zwicky galaxy cluster catalogs (VII/4A 1973 version, 1989 version VII/110A).
VIII. Radio and Far-IR data: Observations in the radio and far-infrared bands, 85 catalogs, including the University of Cambridge 3C radio source catalog (VIII/1A), and the Beijing Astronomical Observatory Miyun Station 232MHz survey (VIII/44).
IX. High-Energy data: Mainly observations in the X-ray and Gamma-ray bands. Because the field started late, there are the fewest catalogs, only 30. It covers data from the Uhuru satellite, ROSAT satellite, and Einstein satellite.
If the database makes format changes or additions to a catalog already included, an uppercase letter is added after the original directory, as with the NGC and 3C catalogs. If the original author releases a new version, it is added as a new catalog. To submit materials to the catalog database, one needs to convert the catalog data into a specified text format and write documentation explaining the characteristics of the catalog and the meaning of the data. After a catalog is officially included, it is synchronized to data centers in the United States, Canada, Japan, India, China, and elsewhere. Since 1993, the catalog database has also begun to collect celestial data tables from journal literature, classified under directory J and then subdivided by journal abbreviation, volume, and issue number. This has now become the main source of new data.
After the emergence of the Internet in the 1980s, the catalog database established an interactive query system for retrieving CSI data, called Simbad (Set of Identifiers, Measurements and Bibliography for Astronomical Data, which is also the name of the famous Arabian sailor Sinbad from One Thousand and One Nights). In 1990, all code was rewritten in C to port the platform to Unix. By the late 1990s, Simbad, designed based on stellar positions and cross-identification, could no longer meet increasingly complex query requirements. CDS then developed a more flexible and powerful online query system, VizieR, hoping it would be like the Vizier (minister) in stories, holding all power and processing all data from all catalogs uniformly. With the rapid growth of astronomical data, dedicated databases such as the Digitized Sky Survey (DSS) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) have also become increasingly sophisticated, making it no longer realistic to centralize all data in one place. To integrate resources from various databases, in 1999, they launched the cross-platform Java program Aladin, letting the omnipotent magic lamp help find the needed resources...
In the thirty-plus years since the establishment of the catalog database, it has completed the digitization of many important historical catalogs. Traditional catalogs have established perfect cross-links and citation relationships with professional literature, observation records, and original photographs. When the knowledge of successive generations is overlapped, human experience is no longer isolated from each other. From the name of a star, one can calibrate its position, see its diffraction spikes in Palomar plates, its color in the Hubble Telescope, pull up its spectrum, determine its distance, classify its stellar population, confirm its age, and contemplate its history of birth from the primordial nebula. From the number of a galaxy, one can exhaust the infrared, ultraviolet, short-wave, long-wave, and X-ray bands, admire its rotating posture, the glow of its dark halo, listen to the whistle of the stellar wind, feel the pulse of a black hole, see how the misty dust nurtures stars, and see how stars in their twilight years end their lives... Photons are dutiful messengers, crossing billions of years of time to reach this small planet, telling us the story since the creation of the universe...
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