3.19. Other Meta Databases

• Astrobrowse allows the user to retrieve information from several sites using one single query form. The user only needs to specify a position (or a name that will be resolved into a position), a search radius and a list of the services (as available from different organizations) that can be accessed. At the moment only a prototype exists on-line (http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/ab)
• AMASE (http://amase.gsfc.nasa.gov)is an on-line multi-mission and multi-spectral range catalog with pointers to locate data stored in different NASA archives. Besides the information of each object (name, coordinates, color, radial velocity or redshift, proper motion, etc.), AMASE provides the very useful information about the observation: the mission, instrument, instrument configuration and detector used; the pointing, time of observation and roll angle; the target, proposal and principal investigator.
• The Astronomical Data Center (http://adc.gsfc.nasa.gov/) contains more than 800 catalogs and 750 tables culled from the literature. The ADC has produced 3 CD-ROMs with astronomical catalogs (a fourth one will have been made available at the end of 1997). A list of the recently incorporated catalogs is included in the monthly ADC Newsletter distributed electronically and also stored at the ADC site.