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) --
Where people tell us about them, we will have pairs of bibliographic identifiers and plate ids in this table. This has been created as a proving ground for https://www.ivoa.net/documents/BibVO, and at least early data in here may not exactly match the intentions of the authors for the cited papers.