Katya P. Tsvetkova

USE OF PHOTOGRAPHIC PLATE ARCHIVES FOR STUDYING THE LONG-TERM BEHAVIOUR OF THE PLEIADES FLARE STARS

As a result of the cooperation between the Sofia Sky Archive Data Center (Bulgaria) and Bamberg Observatory (Germany), Royal Observatory of Edinburgh (UK), Konkoly Observatory (Hungary), Strasbourg Observatory, Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge (UK), etc., a programme for investigation of the long-term behaviour of the Pleiades active dwarf stars (in particular, flare stars) is in progress. Existing plates in the Pleiades are found in different European plate archives, made since the end of the nineteenth century, by the searching tool of the wide-field plate database (http://www.skyarchive.org), which provides detailed information for astronomical plate archives all over the world, as well as for plates themselves. We investigate the Pleiades flare stars (UV Cet-type stars) included in the flare Stars database and identified in the USNO A2.0 catalogue. 68 Pleiades plates are already digitized with different scanning machines such as PDS 1010 (Sofia), PDS 2020 (Munster), SUPER COSMOS (Edinburgh), APM (C...

Flare Stars Database II

Formation of the flare stars database (FSDB) continues (Tsvetkov et al. 1993). Since the beginning of systematic monitoring up to the present 1608 flare stars have been discovered with more than 3107 flare events observed for more than 9313 hours. (Repeated flares for stars from the solar neighbourhood, as well as the time used for their monitoring, are not yet considered). After critical evaluation and homogenization of the data from the original catalogues with the help of a special programme package “Flarebase” the following multiple table structure for the FSDB has been adopted:

Flare stars database: Present status

An updated data collection for UV Cet type stars and their registered flare events in stellar aggregates and in the solar neighbourhood during more than 9580 hours observing time is described. The Flare Stars Database (FSDB) presently includes 3127 entries for 1622 stars.

Serbian virtual observatory

The work on SerVO - Serbian virtual observatory (http://servo.aob.rs/~darko) started in 2008, with aims 1) To establish SerVO and join the EuroVO - European Virtual Observatory and IVOA - Inetrnational Virtual Observatory Alliance; 2) To create SerVO data Center for digitalization and archiving in VO format photo-plates from Belgrade Astronomical Observatory and other astronomical results obtained by the staff; 3) To develop the tools for visualization of data; 3) To develop together with Observatoire de Paris, STARK-B - database containing as the first step Stark widths and shifts of spectral lines, determined within the semiclassical perturbation approach by two of us (MSD-SSB) and to create a mirror site in Belgrade; 4) To make a mirror site for DSED (Darthmouth Stellar Evolution Database) in which development took part one of us (DJ). An additional aim is the creation of VAMDC (Virtual Atomic and Molecular Data Center) AOB (Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade) Node, and a recent objective is the collaboration with the Large Synoptic Telescope (LSST) project.n In this contribution SerVO project is reviewed within the context of e-science in Astronomy -- Astroinformatics.

Wide-field plate archives stored in the Ukrainian observatories

The latest version of the Wide-Field Plate Database Catalogue of Wide-Field Plate Archives (April 2008) contains 43 archives stored at some Ukrainian observatories, namely, at the Main Astronomical Observatory of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Golosiiv, Kyiv), at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory (Nauchnyi and Simeiz), at the Kyiv, L’viv, and Odesa University Observatories, and at the Mykolaiv Observatory. About 126000 plates were obtained from 1898 to 2005 in the framework of the following observing programmes: Solar System Bodies Observations, Observations of Variable Stars, Investigations of the Emission Nebulae and Connected Stars, Spectral Classification of the Stars and Determination of the Stellar Absorption in the Direction of the Emission Nebulae, Photographic Survey of the Northern Sky (FON), Investigation of the Kinematics and Structure of the Main Meridian Section of our Galaxy (MEGA), Observation of Selected Reference Stars, Artificial Satellites Observations and other. At the moment the basic information on 12609 plates from 13 plate archives of the Main Astronomical Observatory and Crimean Astrophysical Observatory is included into the Wide-Field Plate Database Catalogue of Wide-Field Plate Indexes (Sofia, Bulgaria). The plate digitization is just started with flatbed scanners. Some illustrations of the potential of the Ukrainian plate archives for future reusage are given and some compiled plate catalogues are presented on the basis of data from the Wide-Field Plate Database.

GRB optical search in the Wide-field Plate Database and in the Flare Stars Database

This contribution describes the capability of the databases—the Wide-field Plate Database (WFPDB) and the Flare Stars Database (FSDB), for identification of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) with their optical counterparts. The results from the search for plates containing fields of small error boxes for 38 GRBs (and thus suitable for analyses of optical flare events which might be identified with GRB) are presented.

The Wide-Field Plate Database: A New Tool in Observational Astronomy

Since the first applications of wide-field photography in astronomy nearly 2 million plates and films have been obtained and stored in archives all over the world. The Wide-Field Plate Database (WFPDB) provides astronomers with detailed information about the wide-field photographic observations. Its preparation started in 1991 as one of the main projects initiated by the Working Group on Wide Field Imaging at the IAU Commission 9.

The Spectroscopic Plate Archives in the Wide-Field Plate Database

Out of 1,884,000 wide-field photographic observations, stored in numerous archives all over the world, some 51,000 are spectral observations obtained by means of objective prisms. The information for 8,720 of them from 11 archives is in computer-readable form and is already available in the Wide-Field Plate Database (WFPDB) which is in preparation in Sofia. A subcatalogue of all spectral observations is extracted from the WFPDB and the distributions by different observation parameters (coordinates, time, emulsion/filter combination, dispersion) are examined.

Schmidt Telescope Plate Archives

The contemporary state of the Schmidt/Maksutov telescope plate archives and their unification in an Index Plate Catalogue as part of the Wide Field Plate Database is presented.

The WG WFI Plate Database (WFPDB): Present Status

The present status of the work on the creation of a Wide-Field Plate Database is reported. It is planned to collect the available information for about l.S million plates from 187 wide-field instruments in 71 institutes/observatories. The source data are from 213 plate catalogues, 65 of them in computer-readable form. The structure and content of the Wide-Field Plate Database, now including 51 observation catalogues with more than 300,000 plates, is presented.