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What is the ADC?

That Astronomical Data Center ADC is an element of the Space Sciences Directorate at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, located in Greenbelt, Maryland, U.S.A., near Washington, D.C. We are part of the Astrophysics Data Facility of the Space Science Data Operations Office. We work with collections of astronomical data and provide data services the scientific community.

What type of stuff can I find here?

The Astronomical Data Center specializes in archiving and distributing collections of data that have been published by professional astronomers. Most of these data sets are in the form of computer-readable tables of numbers, rather than images. These are often known as astronomical catalogs. Tables published in the professional journals are simply called journal tables.

How do I get to the data files?

The ADC World Wide Web site is organized to help scientists find one or more of the Center's data sets. The data sets are in anonymous FTP directories. The top level of the ADC's public FTP site is on adc.astro.umd.edu in the directory /pub/adc. The data files can be found in the sub-directory /archives. This sub-directory is divided into sub-directories for the ADC's two main data categories: larger astronomical catalogs (/catalogs), and tables from scientific journals (/journal_tables).

To help scientists find data sets of interest, our WWW site allows users to search through the text of the standard "ReadMe" documents of ADC data sets. The user's search terms are compared with the full text of these "ReadMe" files. The best place to start is our Science Data Collections page.

We also have sets of catalogs available on CD-ROM. To find out how to get data on CD-ROM or other media, see ADC Data on CD-ROMs & Other Media/

Got more questions? See the ADC FAQ, our Help page, or send us your question using our feedback form.

See Also:

ADC for Amateur Astronomers
ADC for Students & Educators

Places to get: