Digitised Optical Sky Surveys : Proceedings of the Conference on ‘Digitised Optical Sky Surveys’, Held in Edinburgh, Scotland, 18–21 June 1991

Astronomical photographs contain an enormous amount of information. This presents extremely interesting problems when one wishes to produce digitised sky atlases, to archive the digitised material, to develop sophisticated devices to do the digitising, and to create software to procecc the vast amounts of data. All these activities are necessary to be able to do astronomy. One such activity is the important, large-scale optical identification of objects which also emit radiation at other wavelengths. Other activities of the past decade include a multiplicity of surveys that have been made on galaxies and clusters of galaxies. This book treats, in five sections, the existing and future surveys, their digitisation and their impact on astronomy. It is a reference for people in the field and for those who wish to engage in using or producing sky surveys. Front Matter....Pages i-xix Welcoming Address: Two Thousand Years of Optical Sky Surveys....Pages 1-2 Introduction....Pages 3-8 Front Matter....Pages 9-9 Current and Future Programmes with the UK Schmidt Telescope....Pages 11-22 The Use of Eastman Kodak 4415 Film in the UK Schmidt Telescope....Pages 23-33 The Chinese Large Schmidt Telescope Project....Pages 35-39 The Deep 2-Micron Survey of the Southern Sky....Pages 41-42 Next Generation Optical Sky Surveys....Pages 43-52 Photometric Calibration of the Southern Sky Surveys....Pages 53-60 The Second HST Guide Star Photometric Catalog....Pages 61-63 Front Matter....Pages 65-65 The COSMOS/UKST Catalog of the Southern Sky....Pages 67-75 The Automated Plate Scanner Catalog of the Palomar Sky Survey....Pages 77-85 Digitised Sky Surveys at the Space Telescope Science Institute....Pages 87-94 The Selection of a Sampling Interval for Digitisation: How Fine is Fine Enough?....Pages 95-101 The MAMA Facility: A Survey of Scientific Programmes....Pages 103-108 ASTROSCAN II: The Next Leiden Microdensitometer....Pages 109-114 A New Astrometric Measuring Machine: Design and Astronomical Programmes....Pages 115-121 Hardware and Software Aspects of CCD Camera-Based Astrometric Plate Measurements....Pages 123-131 SuperCOSMOS....Pages 133-139 Real-Time Data Processing for SuperCOSMOS....Pages 141-145 A Colour/Proper Motion Study of the Southern Sky — A Planned Digitisation Programme on SuperCOSMOS....Pages 147-150 Front Matter....Pages 151-151 Developments in Compression Techniques for COSMOS/SuperCOSMOS Data....Pages 153-165 Compression of the Guide Star Digitised Schmidt Plates....Pages 167-175 Proper Motions of M.A.S./Year Accuracy with Photographic Schmidt Plates....Pages 177-183 Updating the AGK3 Reference Star Catalog with Astrometrically Reduced Schmidt Plates....Pages 185-191 Calibration of Large Batches of Photographic Images....Pages 193-198 An Automated Image Measuring System....Pages 199-208 Automated Morphological Classification of Faint Galaxies....Pages 209-213 Automated Star/Galaxy Discrimination with Neural Networks....Pages 215-224 A Comparison of Star/Galaxy Classification Approaches on Digitised Poss-II Plates....Pages 225-230 Automated Stellar Spectral Classification via Statistical Moments....Pages 231-233 Front Matter....Pages 235-235 Asteroid Searches from UKST Material....Pages 237-244 UBV Star Counts in Selected Area 54, and Global Structure of the Galaxy....Pages 245-253 A Search for Macroscopic Dark Matter in the Galactic Halo Through Microlensing....Pages 255-263 A Deep Proper Motion Survey of the Pleiades for Very Low Mass Stars and Brown Dwarfs....Pages 265-270 The Absolute Proper Motion of the Globular Cluster M3....Pages 271-279 The Structure and Stellar Content of the Small Magellanic Cloud....Pages 281-289 The Variable Star System of the Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy....Pages 291-294 Normal Surface Brightness Dwarf Galaxies in the Fornax Cluster....Pages 295-298 Surveys for Low Surface Brightness Galaxies....Pages 299-303 The APM Bright Galaxy Surveys....Pages 305-311 Front Matter....Pages 235-235 The APM Cluster Redshift Survey....Pages 313-321 Galaxy Correlation Function Constraints on Large-Scale Structure....Pages 323-334 The Edinburgh/Durham Southern Galaxy Catalogue....Pages 335-344 The ROE/NRL Cluster Catalog: I. Correlation with Southern Abell Clusters....Pages 345-351 The ROE/NRL Cluster Catalog: II. Correlation with Serendipitous Einstein X-Ray Sources....Pages 353-359 An Automated Search for Compact Groups of Galaxies....Pages 361-365 The Muenster Redshift Project — MRSP....Pages 367-381 A ∼700 Galaxy Magnitude-Limited Redshift Survey Near the SGP....Pages 383-387 The Durham/UKST Galaxy Redshift Survey....Pages 389-395 Extended Structure in the 3-D Galaxy Distribution at the Galactic Poles....Pages 397-404 A Homogeneous Bright Quasar Survey....Pages 405-409 The Edinburgh Multi-Colour Survey for Quasars....Pages 411-416 APM Surveys for High Redshift Quasars....Pages 417-424 Large Groups of Quasars....Pages 425-428 Front Matter....Pages 429-429 The Identification of Potential Counterparts to X-Ray Binaries Using COSMOS....Pages 431-440 The Einstein Slew Survey Catalog....Pages 441-451 The Rosat All-Sky Survey and First Identifications of X-Ray Sources Using Digitised Optical Plates....Pages 453-463 Optical Identification of X-Ray Sources from Digitised Sky Survey Plates....Pages 465-469 Optical Identification of Sources in the IRAS Faint Source Database....Pages 471-483 Optical Identification of the New PARKES/MIT/NRAO Radio Sources from Digitised Sky Survey Data....Pages 485-489 Front Matter....Pages 429-429 Discussion Meeting....Pages 491-498 Conference Overview and Concluding Remarks....Pages 499-508 Back Matter....Pages 509-524