Astron. Astrophys. Suppl. Ser. 143, 33-40

The ALADIN interactive sky atlas

A reference tool for identification of astronomical sources

F. Bonnarel - P. Fernique - O. Bienaymé - D. Egret - F. Genova - M. Louys - F. Ochsenbein - M. Wenger - J.G. Bartlett

Send offprint request: D. Egret
e-mail: question@simbad.u-strasbg.fr

CDS, Observatoire astronomique de Strasbourg, UMR 7550, 11 rue de l'Université, F-67000 Strasbourg, France

Received December 1; accepted December 17, 1999

Abstract:

The ALADIN interactive sky atlas, developed at CDS, is a service providing simultaneous access to digitized images of the sky, astronomical catalogues, and databases. The driving motivation is to facilitate direct, visual comparison of observational data at any wavelength with images of the optical sky, and with reference catalogues.

The set of available sky images consists of the STScI Digitized Sky Surveys, completed with high resolution images of crowded regions scanned at the MAMA facility in Paris.

A Java WWW interface to the system is available at:

http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/.

Key words: astronomical data bases: miscellaneous -- catalogs -- atlases -- surveys