WEBDA: Home Page

A site Devoted to Stellar Clusters in the Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds

Developments and maintenance by Ernst Paunzen
Institute of Astronomy of the University of Vienna (Austria)

Originally developed by Jean-Claude Mermilliod
Laboratory of Astrophysics of the EPFL (Switzerland)

Projects for extending the cluster database (01 Oct. 2005)

The large audience of the Open Cluster Database (WEBDA) shows that this kind of database corresponds to a real need of the astronomical community. A connection will be established between the CDS and WEBDA so that it will be possible to retrieve information on open clusters through the CDS Aladin facility.

In this context, and to answer questions that have been raised several times, it seems to be also useful to develop parallel databanks on

galactic globular clusters,
clusters in the Magellanic Clouds,
observations in embedded clusters and star forming regions,
observations in associations

to store the available data and improve their visibility. Furthermore, the amount of available data will certainly increase due the use of new large telescopes and instruments.

Although such questions has been often raised, no progress has been done in the realisation of appropriate databanks.

Call for help and contributions

I am willing to install the data on the computer to offer a uniform access, but, to permit a rapid development of the data collections

your collaboration would be very important!!

Therefore I would appreciate receiving data files, collection of information, advices.

If you think that this kind of work is not justified, please express also your thoughts to avoid loosing time.

Plans for practical realisation

As done for open clusters, each object will have its own directory and will have its own (dynamical) page on the site providing the basic general parameters.

As it does not seems feasible to develop uniform numbering systems, especially for globular clusters due to the large number of stars and clusters, subdirectories will contain the data published under the relevant numbering system. Published cross-references will of course be integrated to permit further data manipulation.

I shall start from the globular cluster list of the master catalogue of William Harris and the works by Bica et al. for the Magellanic Clouds.

If you have better ideas, please contact me. I shall be very happy to receive help in such a project which concerns the whole community on star clusters.

Last modification: 01 July 2007