ASTRO 293: Research Resources

On-line Resources

There are now a wide variety of on-line data-bases containing both bibliographic as well as raw data sets. A recent compilation of most of these sites can be found at the Urania web site. Links include:

Peer Reviewed Journals: electronic versions for the last few years, plus lists of recently submitted papers.
Bibliographic Resources: the best way to do a literature search.
Data Centers: go get the data!
Object-indexed Data and Bibliographic Search Systems: The best way to find out what is already known about specific objects or fields.
Historical Journal Archive: electronic copies extending back to 1980, when the dinosaurs roamed the earth.

I recommend using ADS as a starting point for literature searches. If you are looking for information on particular astronomical objects, try NED. However, there are several other powerful sites also listed in Urania In addition to these, there are other dedicated data archives. Some of the most important ones are:

HST Data Archive
This is the raw data archive of observations taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. Almost all data is available after a 1 year proprietary period. There is a X-windows brower which you can download called Starview.
CFH Data Archive
This is the raw data archive of observations taken with the Canada-France-Hawaii 3.8m telescope (CFHT) which sits atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The scientists associated with CFHT should be noted as being some of the fields most inventive and bold instrumentalists. CFHT has consistantly been in the lead of developing and deploying novel and powerful instruments. As a consequence, this telescope and its data are extremely interesting and will remain vital even though it is not of 10m-class. Remarkably, this telescope consortium has decided to archive all data taken with their telescope and make it publicly available after 1 years time. Again, they were the first.

Last updated: Feb 3, 1997 Matthew A. Bershady