Abstract
We describe the current status of CATS (astrophysical CATalogs Support system), a publicly accessible tool maintained at Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SAO RAS) (this http URL) allowing one to search hundreds of catalogs of astronomical objects discovered all along the electromagnetic spectrum. Our emphasis is mainly on catalogs of radio continuum sources observed from 10 MHz to 245 GHz, and secondly on catalogs of objects such as radio and active stars, X-ray binaries, planetary nebulae, HII regions, supernova remnants, pulsars, nearby and radio galaxies, AGN and quasars. CATS also includes the catalogs from the largest extragalactic surveys with non-radio waves. In 2008 CATS comprised a total of about 10e9 records from over 400 catalogs in the radio, IR, optical and X-ray windows, including most source catalogs deriving from observations with the Russian radio telescope RATAN-600. CATS offers several search tools through different ways of access, e.g. via web interface and e-mail. Since its creation in 1997 CATS has managed about 10,000 requests. Currently CATS is used by external users about 1500 times per day and since its opening to the public in 1997 has received about 4000 requests for its selection and matching tasks.
Highlights
Vast amounts of astrophysical information are being published, based on observations of small and large sky regions
We describe the current status of CATS, a publicly accessible tool maintained at Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SAO RAS) allowing one to search hundreds of catalogs of astronomical objects discovered all along the electromagnetic spectrum
In 2008 CATS comprised a total of about 109 records from over 400 catalogs in the radio, IR, optical and X-ray windows, including most source catalogs deriving from observations with the Russian radio telescope RATAN-600
Summary
Vast amounts of astrophysical information are being published, based on observations of small and large sky regions. Over the past decades several different attempts have been made to combine large numbers of astronomical catalogs and make them accessible in a unified way, which can be classified grossly into two categories: databases of objects and catalog browsers Examples of the former are NED (Helou et al, 1990; Mazzarella et al, 2002), Simbad (Egret, 1983; Wenger et al, 2000), and LEDA (Paturel et al, 1997). In that sense CATS is ideally suited for the experienced researcher who is looking for the largest amount of data available, but willing and able to work out the correct cross-identifications by himself This effort will be compensated for by more complete data than those obtained from other existing object databases. A Dual Opteron 244 under OS Linux Fedora Core 6
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