EHARNDEN@AUVM.BITNET (Eric Harnden) (03/11/89)
Fairly recently, some mention was made of interest in obtaining data on star positions in a machine-readable format. I have heard that NSSDC has just installed a CD-ROM pre-mastering workstation. The first CD-ROM developed by them conatins 31 astronomical source catalogs from the archives of the Astronomical Data Center. The ADC documents and distributes more than 500 catalogs of data for stellar and non-stellar objects, and this first release represents the most ofetn-requested and scientifically valuable data sets. Ecah of the catalogs on the CD-ROM is presented in text file format and as Flexible Image Transport System tables. Complete docs are included. The ADC CD-ROM apparently will be distributed to any parties who can access disks mastered in the ISO 9660 format. This requires users of IBM PC/clones to have the Microsoft CD-ROM Extensions Version 2.0. Rudimentary browsing software for FITS tables on MS-DOS machines will be provided by the ADC. Users on Sun and MicroVax cpus should make sure that the OS can handle ISO 9660 format. Eric Harnden (Ronin) <EHARNDEN@AUVM> The American University Physics Dept. (202) 885-2758