VI/30A Plates of the ESO / SERC Sky Survey (Holmberg+ 1974-)
Plate Centers of the European Southern Observatory Sky Survey
Holmberg E.B., Lauberts A., Schuster H.-E., West R.M.
<Astron. Astrophys. Suppl. Ser. 18, 463 (1974)>
=1974A&AS...18..463H 1974A&AS...18..463H
ADC_Keywords: Surveys; Plate data
Description:
The "ESO/SRC Atlas of the Southern Sky" is a major tool for, among
other things, the optical identification of sources in non-optical
wavelengths.
The catalog contains the coordinates of the plate centers, as well as
the actual observation dates of the plates composing the ESO(B) Survey
(also called the Quick Blue Survey) over in the period 1973/79, the
ESO Red survey, observed in the period 1978/90, and the SRC-J survey
at the Anglo-Australian telescope in the period 1974/1987.
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
esob.dat 67 606 Observed plates in Blue at ESO
esor.dat 70 617 Observed plates in Red at ESO
srcj.dat 71 609 Observed plates in Blue at the Anglo-Australian Obs.
centers.dat 40 606 Nominal centers of Southern plates
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See also:
VI/25 : Plate Centers of POSS-I (Palomar Obs. 1960)
VI/114 : Plate Centers of POSS-II (Read, 2004)
Byte-by-byte Description of file: esob.dat, esor.dat, srcj.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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2 A1 --- Col [BR] Color
3- 7 I5 --- Plate Plate number
9 A1 --- --- [*] Additional plates (in esor.dat)
10- 15 A6 --- Srv Survey name
18- 20 I3 --- Field Nominal field number
22- 23 I2 h RAh Right Ascension Center B1950 (hours)
24- 26 I3 dmin RAdm Right Ascension B1950 (deci-minutes)
27 A1 --- DE- Declination B1950 (sign)
28- 29 I2 deg DEd [0,90] Declination B1950 (degrees)
30- 31 I2 arcmin DEm Declination B1950 (minutes)
33- 36 I4 yr Obs.Y Observation date (year)
37- 38 I2 "month" Obs.M Observation date (month)
39- 40 I2 d Obs.D Observation date (day)
41 A1 --- --- [:]
42- 46 A5 "h:m" LST Local Sideral Time of Observation
48- 53 A6 --- Emuls Photographic emulsion
55- 59 A5 --- Filter Name of filter
61- 65 F5.1 min ExpTime Exposure time
67- 71 A5 --- Grade based on the smallest image size in microns
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Byte-by-byte Description of file: centers.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 3 I3 --- FldNum ? ESO/SRC Atlas of the Southern Sky field
number.
7- 8 I2 h RAh *? Field center right ascension (B1950)
11- 12 I2 min RAm *? Field center right ascension (B1950)
16 A1 --- DE- Field center declination (sign) (B1950)
17- 18 I2 deg DEd *? Field center declination (deg) (B1950)
22- 29 F8.5 rad RArad *? Right ascension in radians (B1950)
33- 40 F8.5 rad DErad *? Declination in radians (B1950)
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Note on RAh, RAm, DEd:
Nominal field center, equatorial coordinates (1950.0), in sexagesimal units.
Note on RArad, DErad:
Nominal field center, equatorial coordinates (1950.0) in radians.
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REMARKS AND MODIFICATIONS:
The file of plate centers (centers.dat) gives the nominal field
centers of the ESO/SRC Atlas of the Southern Sky as listed in
Holmberg et al. (1974). This file was prepared by the Astronomical
Data Center (ADC), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
The nominal centers were adopted, and one plate scale was adopted for
all the fields. This scale is 66.98 arc seconds/mm in the east-west
direction and 67.26 arc seconds/mm in the north-south direction. This
scale was derived by measuring the distances between SAO stars on
selected films and was tested by generating overlays with a Calcomp
plotter. The ability to efficiently generate such overlays for source
identification was the primary reason for producing this dataset.
Acknowledgments:
Thanks to Heinz Andernach (Univ. Guanajuato) and Mike Reed
(Royal Obs. Edinburgh) for the files containing the actual
observation dates (added in July 2005)
History:
* 16-Aug-1995: catalog made of the file "centers.dat"
by C.-H. Joseph Lyu [Hughes STX/NASA]
* 21-Jul-2005: Files containing observation dates and qualities
were supplied by Mike Reed (Royal Obs. Edinburgh). Added
the file "srcj.dat" (from Mike Reed)
* 03-Nov-2007: one spurious record having RA and Dec set to zero
was removed from the esor.dat file.
REFERENCES:
Holmberg, E. B., Lamberts, A., Schuster, H. E., and West, R. M. (1974).
Astron. Astrophys Suppl. pp. 463-489.
Nagy, T. A. (1980). Astronomical Data Center Bulletin pp. 28-31.
(End) Francois Ochsenbein [CDS] 21-Jul-2005