Astron. Astrophys. Suppl. Ser. 143, 1-7

The CDS information hub

On-line services and links at the Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg

F. Genova - D. Egret - O. Bienaymé - F. Bonnarel - P. Dubois - P. Fernique - G. Jasniewicz - S. Lesteven - R. Monier - F. Ochsenbein - M. Wenger

Send offprint request: F. Genova

CDS, Observatoire astronomique de Strasbourg, UMR 7550, 11 rue de l'Université, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
e-mail: question@simbad.u-strasbg.fr

Received December 20, 1999; accepted January 17, 2000

Abstract:

The Centre de données astronomiques de Strasbourg (CDS) provides homogeneous access to heterogeneous information of various origins: information about astronomical objects in SIMBAD; catalogs and observation logs in VIZIER and in the catalogue service; reference images and overlays in ALADIN; nomenclature in the Dictionary of Nomenclature; Yellow Page services; the AstroGLU resource discovery tool; mirror copies of other reference services; and documentation. With the implementation of links between the CDS services, and with other on-line reference information, CDS has become a major hub in the rapidly evolving world of information retrieval in astronomy, developing efficient tools to help astronomers to navigate in the world-wide "Virtual Observatory'' under construction, from data in the observatory archives to results published in journals.

The WWW interface to the CDS services is available at: http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/

Key words: astronomical data bases: miscellaneous -- catalogs -- publications, bibliography -- surveys -- standards