To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to the HDAP scans. For details, see the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Public Domain dedication. Of course, you should still give proper credit when using this data as required by good scientific practice.
![[CC0]](/static/img/cc0.png)
For a list of all services and tables belonging to this service's resource, see Information on resource 'HDAP -- Heidelberg Digitized Astronomical Plates'
The scanning of the plate archive at Landessternwarte Heidelberg was initiated by Holger Mandel and Kurt Birkle in 2006 and was funded by the Klaus-Tschira-Foundation. Almost all usable direct plates in the archives are now scanned, and the funded phase of the project is over. Only minor additions are expected any more.
The plate archive consists of plates from many different sources. The following table gives an overview of the instruments at which the plates were taken:
| plate letter | name | eff. focal length [mm] | aperture ratio | scale [as/mm] | plate size | latitude | longitude | height |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | Calar Alto Schmidt telescope | 2400 | f/3 | 86 | 24x24cm | 37.22417 N | +2.5375 W | 2168 m |
| B | Königstuhl Bruce telescope | 2000 | f/5 | 103 | 24x30cm or 30x30cm | 49.39861 N | -8.72083 E | 560 m |
| C | 1.23m in Casseg. focus with corrector | 9857 | f/8 | 20.9 | 24x24cm | 37.22361 N | +2.5461 W | 2138 m |
| D | 72cm Walz- Reflektor | 2815 | f/3.9 | 73.3 | 13x18cm or 9x12cm | 49.39861 N | -8.72083 E | 560 m |
| E | 2.2m in Cassegrain focus with corrector | 17037 | f/7.744 | 12.1 | 20x25cm (8x10in) or 24x24 cm | 37.22361 N | +2.5461 W | 2138 m |
| F | 3.5m in primary focus with 3-lens corrector | 13761 | f/3.93 | 15 | 20x25cm (8x10in) | 37.22361 N | +2.5461 W | 2138 m |
| F | 3.5m in primary focus with 2-lens corrector | 12195 | f/3.48 | 16.9 | 12.5x20 (5x8in) | 37.22361 N | +2.5461 W | 2138 m |
| H | 2.2m MPG ESO/La Silla | 17679 | f/8 | 12 | 20x25cm | -29.257225 S | +70.734595 W | 2335 m |
| G | Wolf's Doppel- astrograph (15cm) on Königstuhl (7/1897-1909) | 900mm | f/6 | 230 | 13x18cm or 9x12cm | +49.39861 N | -8.72083 E | 560m |
| G | Wolf's Doppel- astrograph (15cm) in Märzgasse (1887-7/1897) | 900mm | f/6 | 230 | 13x18cm or 9x12cm | +49.60988 N | -8.69387 E | 110m |
Unfortunately, instrument data on the 2.2m MPG telescope on La Silla are lost. If anyone can help out, please contact gavo@ari.uni-heidelberg.de.
The Observation logs of the more ancient observations are available from UB Heidelberg.
The project was discussed on a poster shown at the 2007 meeting of the Astronomische Gesellschaft in Würzburg.
A slightly more technical article appeared in the proceedings of the 2014 Astroplate conference.
This is what the photographic plates these scans were prepared from look like --
The archive of plates from Wolf's eight-inch telescope --
The Bruce archive -- the rack's bend indicates the plates are kept beneath an observatory dome --
The scanner used by this project (Heidelberg Nexscan F4100; the resolution is 100 pixels per millimeter at 200 pixels per millimeter optical scanner resolution) --
You can access this service using:
This service is not published. This can mean that it was deemed too unimportant, for internal use only, or is just a helper for a published service. Equally likely, however, it is under development, abandoned in development or otherwise unfinished. Exercise caution.
Other services provided on the underlying data include:
The following fields are available to provide input to the service (with some renderers, some of these fields may be unavailable):
| Name | Table Head | Description | Unit | UCD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| bibref | Bibref | Bibcode of a paper using or citing a plate. | N/A | meta.bib.bibcode |
The following fields are contained in the output by default. More fields may be available for selection; these would be given below in the VOTable output fields.
| Name | Table Head | Description | Unit | UCD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| accref | Product key | Access key for the data | N/A | meta.ref.url |
| centerAlpha | Ctr. RA | Approximate center of image, RA | deg | pos.eq.ra |
| centerDelta | Ctr. Dec | Approximate center of image, Dec | deg | pos.eq.dec |
| checks | Select | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| datalink | DL | URL of a datalink document for this dataset. | N/A | meta.ref.url |
| dateObs | Obs. date | Epoch at midpoint of observation | d | time;obs.exposure |
| exposure | Exp. time | Effective exposure time | s | time.duration;obs.exposure |
| plateID | Plate | Plate name as specified in observation catalogue | N/A | N/A |
The following fields are available in VOTable output. The verbosity level is a number intended to represent the relative importance of the field on a scale of 1 to 30. The services take a VERB argument. A field is included in the output if their verbosity level is less or equal VERB*10.
| Name | Table Head | Description | Unit | UCD | Verb. Level |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| dateObs | Obs. date | Epoch at midpoint of observation | d | time;obs.exposure | 0 |
| centerAlpha | Ctr. RA | Approximate center of image, RA | deg | pos.eq.ra | 0 |
| centerDelta | Ctr. Dec | Approximate center of image, Dec | deg | pos.eq.dec | 0 |
| datalink | DL | URL of a datalink document for this dataset. | N/A | meta.ref.url | 1 |
| accref | Product key | Access key for the data | N/A | meta.ref.url | 1 |
| plateID | Plate | Plate name as specified in observation catalogue | N/A | N/A | 15 |
| exposure | Exp. time | Effective exposure time | s | time.duration;obs.exposure | 15 |
| checks | Select | N/A | N/A | N/A | 20 |
To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to the HDAP scans. For details, see the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Public Domain dedication. Of course, you should still give proper credit when using this data as required by good scientific practice.
VOResource XML (that's something exclusively for VO nerds)
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