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2 Astronomical catalogues


 

 
Table 1: Evolution of the annual number of papers, and the percentage of papers with associated electronic data, for some of the main astronomical magazines
Journal 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1994-1998
  Papers %El. Papers %El. Papers %El. Papers %El. Papers %El. Papers %El.
A&A 1300 1.3 1223 2.9 1394 5.3 1525 6.6 1569 4.1 5711 4.8
A&AS 236 42.8 269 42.0 438 28.4 298 49.0 159 43.3 1164 38.9
ApJ(L) 2064 0.3 2121 0.4 2166 1.1 2255 0.8 2235 0.6 10841 0.6
ApJS 255 12.9 138 25.4 116 22.4 115 16.5 102 11.6 726 17.2
PASP 158 7.0 161 4.3 153 2.0 159 2.5 181 2.8 812 3.7
AJ 425 10.4 504 14.1 477 9.2 460 8.3 501 9.4 2367 10.3
MNRAS 656 1.4 752 2.7 775 0.8 833 1.6 980 1.0 3996 1.5



 

 
Table 2: Summary of the evolution of accessible digital catalogues in the last five years (number of catalogues and sizes in Mbytes). The last column gives the number of catalogues with a standardized description (see Sect. 4)
Category June 1994 June 1995 June 1996 Oct. 1997 Oct. 1998 Oct. 1999
    N Mb N Mb N Mb N Mb N Mb N Mb Std
I Astrometric 151 1258 158 1292 167 1460 199 2502 207 2777 210 2798 113
II Photometric 144 307 152 320 153 305 187 467 194 525 198 563 110
III Spectroscopic 119 162 126 172 125 173 158 233 163 245 170 249 100
IV Cross-Identification 16 89 16 89 15 83 17 91 17 91 17 91 5
V Combined Data 63 367 63 372 65 365 76 557 84 728 86 842 53
VI Miscellaneous 43 157 49 188 50 502 70 634 71 634 73 653 46
VII Non-stellar 115 361 119 280 122 371 157 425 178 453 180 453 121
VIII Radio 24 269 28 269 29 269 39 414 46 615 53 853 51
IX High-Energy -- -- -- -- -- -- 6 77 8 79 10 200 10
J/A+A A&A 58 2 98 4 158 8 299 16 371 22 424 26 424
J/A+AS A&A Supp. 123 12 235 24 350 33 544 55 698 73 817 83 817
J/AJ Astron. J. 15 1 91 6 126 10 252 21 295 25 345 31 345
J/ApJS ApJ Suppl. 13 1 36 4 52 7 111 14 147 16 165 18 165
J/(P)AZh Russian Astron. J. -- -- -- -- -- -- 18 0.2 26 0.5 49 0.9 49
J From Journals 233 17 517 40 766 60 1404 118 1771 151 2087 180 2087
  Grand Total 908 2986 1228 3022 1492 3588 2313 5517 2739 6299 3084 6882 2692


Jaschek ([1989]) defined a catalogue as a long list of ordered data of a specific kind, collected for a particular purpose. What a long list means has evolved dramatically in the last decade: the new way of processing data actually resulted in a tremendous increase in both the number and the volume of the astronomical catalogues. To illustrate the evolution in the domain of catalogued surveys, one can remember that the largest catalogues in the beginning of this century, called the Durchmusterungen -- the Bonner, Cordoba and Cape Durchmusterungen -- provided only a position and a visual estimate of the brightness for $\sim 1.5\ 10^6$ stars, and required over 50 years to be completed. Today, a catalogue gathering similar parameters -- with an accuracy one order of magnitude better -- is well represented by the USNO-A2.0 ([Monet 1998]) which contains roughly $5\ 10^8$ sources, almost three orders of magnitude larger. Even larger catalogues are being built: let us quote the GSC-II (Greene et al. 1998) which should contain all optical sources brighter than $18^{\rm th}$ magnitude, which can be estimated to about $2\ 10^9$ objects.

The existence of these new mega-catalogues -- which are, in fact, rather giga-catalogues -- does however not mean that the old catalogues can just be ignored: virtually any astronomical object can be subject to variability, maybe over periods of several centuries, and the discrepancies between old and newer results have therefore to be analyzed.

Another important source of tabular material consists in tables published in the astronomical literature. These tables are now almost always originally in digital form, and contain highly processed data which usage can be precious; access to these electronic data is also essential for maintaining the large databases like SIMBAD or NED.

The potential interest of the reusability of these tables led the Editors of the leading astronomical journals to distribute the tabular material in electronic form. The first realisations for A&A started in 1993 (see Ochsenbein & Lequeux [1995]), and Table 1 summarizes the frequency of the availability of electronic tabular data among the publications in some of the main astronomical journals in the recent years: not surprisingly, the Supplement Series, which were created essentially for the presentation of the observational results, show a high rate of associated electronic data.


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