Information on Service 'Wolf-Palisa Survey'

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The photographic plates published here were the source of the first star atlas based on photographic plates, prepared by Max Wolf and Johann Palisa. It was published sucessively in 1899, 1902, and 1908. Think of it as the POSS of the dawn of astrophotography.

For a list of all services and tables belonging to this service's resource, see Information on resource 'HDAP -- Heidelberg Digitized Astronomical Plates'

Service Documentation

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.

Sources

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.

More Information

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.

Trivia

This is what the photographic plates these scans were prepared from look like --

/lswscans/res/positions/q/static/bruceplate.jpg

The archive of plates from Wolf's eight-inch telescope --

/lswscans/res/positions/q/static/eightarchive.jpg

The Bruce archive -- the rack's bend indicates the plates are kept beneath an observatory dome --

/lswscans/res/positions/q/static/platearchive.jpg

The scanner used by this project (Heidelberg Nexscan F4100; the resolution is 100 pixels per millimeter at 200 pixels per millimeter optical scanner resolution) --

/lswscans/res/positions/q/static/scanner.jpg

Overview

You can access this service using:

Coverage

1837.52 2000.66

This resource is not (directly) 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 some caution.

Other services provided on the underlying data include:

Default Output Fields

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.

NameTable Head DescriptionUnitUCD
acc4 Scaled 1/4 Original plate scaled to 25% N/A meta.ref.url
accref Product key Access key for the data N/A meta.ref.url
accsize File size Size of the data in bytes byte VOX:Image_FileSize
centerAlpha Ctr. RA Approximate center of image, RA deg pos.eq.ra
centerDelta Ctr. Dec Approximate center of image, Dec deg pos.eq.dec
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
imageTitle Title Synthetic name of the image N/A meta.title
map_image Map image Scanned map as produced by Wolf and Palisa. N/A meta.id
plateID Plate Plate name as specified in observation catalogue N/A N/A
w_p_id Wolf-Palisa Plate number in the Wolf-Palisa survey N/A meta.id

VOTable Output Fields

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.

NameTable Head DescriptionUnitUCD Verb. Level
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
imageTitle Title Synthetic name of the image N/A meta.title 0
dateObs Obs. date Epoch at midpoint of observation d time;obs.exposure 0
datalink DL URL of a datalink document for this dataset. N/A meta.ref.url 1
acc4 Scaled 1/4 Original plate scaled to 25% N/A meta.ref.url 1
accref Product key Access key for the data N/A meta.ref.url 1
w_p_id Wolf-Palisa Plate number in the Wolf-Palisa survey N/A meta.id 5
map_image Map image Scanned map as produced by Wolf and Palisa. N/A meta.id 5
accsize File size Size of the data in bytes byte VOX:Image_FileSize 11
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
observer Observer Observer N/A obs.observer 21

Citation Info

VOResource XML (that's something exclusively for VO nerds)