The Moscow plate archive

image cutout service (beta!)

Overview

This page provides a test access to cutouts from the digitized photographic plates of the "A" series of the Moscow collection. You may specify R.A., Dec. of the image center and the cutout size in pixels in the form below. The image scale is 1.37"/pix (new scanner) or 1.29"/pix (old scanner). Only few selected 10x10 degrees fields are covered by the digitized images, but each field is imaged hundreds of times for variable star studies (plate center positions are J2000):

# Field name  Approximate center  Number of plates
 Beta Cas     00:06:34 +58:52:00     413
 SA 9         03:07:30 +60:27:00     178
 66 Oph       17:57:49 +04:22:00     261
 104 Her      18:10:01 +31:23:00     169
 61 Cyg       21:04:57 +38:32:00     187

Only a small fraction of the Moscow plate collection has been digitized so far.
Sky coverage plot:

The time distribution of observations:

Image Archive

You may use this form to access the images of a given sky region. It will take about three minutes to extract the requested images. (Image resampling on old hardware takes time!) Please click just once and wait for results.

Photometry of known variables

A collection of photographic lightcurve data for known variable stars may be found here. Only previously known variables objects that passed strict photometric quality cuts and showing significant brightness variations in our photographic data appear in the list. Some known variable objects visible on the plates will be missing from the list as their brightness could not be measured well. The possible reasons are: the object is too bright or too faint, its variability amplitude is too small or the object is blended with a nearby star preventing accurate photometry.

A recent overview of our plate digitization and data analysis efforts may be found in this e-print.

Please send your comments, questions and suggestions to kirx[at]scan.sai.msu.ru