The Data Collections

Data compilations started already in 1972 at the Institute for Astronomy (University of Lausanne, Switzerland). In 1976, the first catalogue of UBV photometry and MK spectral types was published. The third version of this catalogue (CDS II/124A) was announced ten years later (Mermilliod 1986).

The systematic determination of cross-references between the many numbering systems in a cluster was the basic work which made the realisation of the data collections possible.

Several catalogues are distributed by the Strasbourg Data Center (CDS). The files remained on magnetic tapes until the installation of Unix workstations and large disks in our institute made it possible to keep the data on-line.

These compilations were discontinued in their older form and the data were organised in a database designed in March 1987. The first form of the database, called BDA, is described in several publications and was a set a flat ASCII files with Unix shell and awk commands.

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Last update: 04 February 2009