🚀 go-pugleaf

     Fairly recently, some mention was made of interest in obtaining data
on star positions in a machine-readable format. I have heard that NSSDC
has just installed a CD-ROM pre-mastering workstation. The first CD-ROM
developed by them conatins 31 astronomical source catalogs from the
archives of the Astronomical Data Center. The ADC documents and distributes
more than 500 catalogs of data for stellar and non-stellar objects, and this
first release represents the most ofetn-requested and scientifically
valuable data sets. Ecah of the catalogs on the CD-ROM is presented in text
file format and as Flexible Image Transport System tables. Complete docs
are included. The ADC CD-ROM apparently will be distributed to any parties
who can access disks mastered in the ISO 9660 format. This requires users
of IBM PC/clones to have the Microsoft CD-ROM Extensions Version 2.0.
Rudimentary browsing software for FITS tables on MS-DOS machines will be
provided by the ADC. Users on Sun and MicroVax cpus should make sure that
the OS can handle ISO 9660 format.

Eric Harnden (Ronin)
<EHARNDEN@AUVM>
The American University Physics Dept.
(202) 885-2758