Moscow Astronomical Plate Archives:
Contents, Digitization, Current and
Possible Applications
N.N. Samus1,2, L.A. Sat1,
S.V. Vereshchagin1, A.V. Zharova2
1Institute of Astronomy, Russian
Academy of Sciences, 48, Pyatnitskaya Str., Moscow 119017, Russia
2Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow University,
13, University Ave., Moscow 119899, Russia
Presented at
the international workshop "Virtual Observatories: Plate Content
Digitization, Archive Mining and Image Sequence Processing", Sofia, April 2005
Abstract. We describe the astronomical plate
archives in Moscow and Zvenigorod and the existing digitization
projects. The collection at Sternberg Institute has very valuable parts that
can be applied to studies of variable stars and external galaxies and still
contain much important information never used yet.
1 Introduction
Regular photographic
observations of the sky for variable-star studies were started in Moscow in 1895.
Since then, several different telescopes were used to take direct sky plates
in and near Moscow, for astrometry and for astrophysics. The Moscow plate
archive also contains very important series of direct photographs and
objective-prism plates taken at the Sternberg Institute's observatory in Crimea. The direct-plate
archive of the Zvenigorod Observatory (Institute of Astronomy of
the Russian Academy of Sciences) is less rich but also contains several thousand
plates.
2 The Plate
Archive of the Sternberg Institute
The contents
of the most important Moscow astronomical plate archive, that of the Sternberg Astronomical
Institute, was briefly presented in Shugarov et al. [1] in 1999. Since then,
the information has been considerably improved. We present its new version in
the Table (N is a somewhat rounded
number of plates) (In this preprint,
the Table was revised compared to the presentation in Sofia and is now still newer
compared to [1]). Besides the plate series listed
in the Table, the plate archive contains several additional, minor and less
important, plate and film series.
THE MOSCOW PLATE COLLECTION (STERNBERG INSTITUTE)
D, cm
|
F, cm
|
Field size, deg
|
mlim
|
Years
|
N
|
Site
|
10
|
64
|
20´28
|
13
– 14
|
1895
– 1933
|
1100
|
Moscow
|
16
|
82
|
16´22
|
14
|
1933
– 1956
|
2700
|
Moscow
|
23
|
230
|
6´6
|
|
1955
– 1991
|
10000
|
Moscow etc.
|
38
|
640
|
1.4´1.4
|
14
|
1902
– 1972
|
6400
|
Moscow
|
40
|
160
|
10´10
|
|