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The History of The Astronomical Data Center

In the early 1970's a stellar data center was established in Strasbourg, France to collect digital astronomical catalogs and disseminate them to the astronomical community. Recognizing the importance of this undertaking, Dr. Jaylee Mead decided that a similar repository in North America would be valuable and established an informal cooperation with Strasbourg. Dr. Mead applied to NASA headquarters for support. Her proposal was accepted on the basis that the center would provide important supporting information to the astronomical data to be obtained from space, particularly by the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) and the Large Space Telescope (as the Hubble Space Telescope was known then). Not only would the ground-based data be necessary for the planning of space observations but they would also provide important correlative information. Hence, the NASA Astronomy Program provided funds to begin the collection of digital catalogs.

The Astronomical Data Center (ADC) was formally established in 1977 and was later made a part of the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) which had been set up in 1966 to provide an archive for space science observations. NASA support has continued since that time although the source of funding has been transferred from the Astronomy and Relativity Branch to the Space Science Information Systems Office which provides support for the NSSDC and its parent organization, the Space Science Data Operations Office (SSDOO) .

In the brief history of the ADC, the way that the astrophysics community makes use of astronomical tables and catalogs has changed dramatically. When the ADC was established, its main activity was creating and validating large catalogs and their cross-references in digital form. The distribution of the data was usually done via magnetic tape, and the ADC holdings were advertised on paper media. Most of the correspondence was by mail.

With the advent of Internet in the 1980's this started to change. The smaller catalogs were distributed via E-mail and FTP. Correspondence was conducted more and more by E-mail, and the data holdings were made available on an electronic bulletin board, the ADC On-Line Information Service. This bulletin board was available via modem, DECnet and the Internet.

In 1991, a set of 114 catalogs were made available on CD-ROM , including many in the then recently accepted FITS standard. In 1992, the ADC published its first electronic newsletter which is now distributed to over 990 astronomers worldwide. In 1993 the ADC joined CDS in the collection of tables from astronomical publications that are extensive enough to make access desirable, but that are not major catalogs. In January 1994, the ADC published the "Astronomical Catalog Desk Reference - 1994 Edition" to help astronomers find catalogs of interest in our data holdings. This publication, that is now out-of-date, has been replaced by author and keyword indices on the WWW. Also in 1994, the ADC developed WWW access in order to provide browse capabilities. In October 1995, the ADC established new Internet services on the ADC workstation hosting enhanced WWW and FTP access to its archives. In January 1996, the ADC announced the availability of its new Selected Astronomical Catalogs, Volume 2 CD-ROM . This CD-ROM contains 60 catalogs covering a variety of subjects and were selected because they are large or frequently requested. In January 1997, a third CD-ROM was released. It contains 74 catalogs representing additional frequently requested catalogs and updates of versions on the two earlier volumes. In January 1998, a fourth CD-ROM was released. It contains a mix of catalogs which have been updated since Volumes 1, 2 and 3 and popular data sets not published on the first three volumes.

In 1998, ADC also introduced a series of visualization tools, ADC Catalog Viewer, Catseye and IMPReSS . These tools are designed to allow a user of the ADC archives to choose a catalog though several ADC interfaces, see which of the files associated with that catalog are capable of being "viewed", and then select catalog data files for subsetting, sorting and viewing, and for making scatter plots. The IMPReSS facility was enhanced to allow access to NASA mission logs, create plot overlays of observation footprints, and aid in the retrieval of archived data and browse images. The ADC made available a set of 'Quick Reference Pages' (QRPs). Each QRP is devoted to a particular astronomical or ADC-related topic, and contains selected links to data sources for that topic. These links generally point to data holdings within the ADC, but there are also many links to sources at other sites, where appropriate. A second installation of the CDS VizieR catalog data lookup and display service was mirrored here at ADC. The ADC is now actively working on applying XML for astronomical data tables.

In 2002, NASA determined that ADC services sufficiently overlap those provided by CDS and others to allow termination of the ADC. Therefore, effective October 1 2002, NASA routed ADC users to the other sites that now perform these same services. We apologize if this causes you any inconvenience.

Reference:
"The Astronomical Data Base and Retrieval System at NASA", Mead, J.M., Nagy, T.A., Hill, R.S., and Warren, W.H. Jr. 1982, in Automated Data Retrieval in Astronomy, C. Jaschek and W. Heintz, Reidel Publishing Company, p9-13.

" The Early History of the ADC", Mead, J.M., ADC Electronic News, Volume 6, Issue 3, July 1997.

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Authors: James Gass & Gail Schneider