The AAS CD-ROM Series
Astrophysics on Disc
Volume V, December 1995

• Preface
• Introduction
• CD-ROM Contents
• CD-ROM Format
• Documentation
• Credits

Preface

NOTE: If you are using an Apple Macintosh, or some other computer that presents filenames in UPPERCASE with a trailing ";1", this version of the HTML documentation has been provided with Uniform Resource Locator (URL) file references in that format. If you encounter difficulty following links in this document, try aascdrom.HTM, instead, which has URLs in lowercase, or try AASCDU.HTM, which has URLs in UPPERCASE.

Please forward comments, questions, and constructuve criticism of this HTML documentation to [email protected].

Introduction

This series provides a means for publishing astronomical data in a convenient and useful format. CD-ROM is an industry standard for reliable high-volume publishing of software, data, imagery, and text. The AAS has chosen CD-ROM publishing of data as part of its overall plans for electronic publishing.

This CD-ROM volume contains data, imagery, and graphic line-art from 51 papers. A complete table of contents is presented below.

CD-ROM Contents

The Author Index is a listing of all authors on this volume. The Table of Contents for the volume contains titles, authors, and references for each paper, as well as hypertext links to the abstracts and documentation for each paper. One may proceed directly to a particular journal by following the appropriate link. The Directory of Files contains hypertext links to every file for the volume.

• Author Index
• Table of Contents
  1. Volume V, December 1995
     • Astronomical Journal
     • Astrophysical Journal
     • Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series
     • Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
     • Directory of Files

CD-ROM Format

Textual data on this CD-ROM are stored as Unix ASCII text files. This implies 7-bit ASCII characters in records delimited by a linefeed character (decimal value 10, hexadecimal value 0A). Some data were provided by the authors as Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) tables. In this case, the FITS tables have been kept on the CD-ROM, and the table data has also been extracted into plain ASCII text files. Graphic line art is stored in Postscript files suitable for printing on standard Postscript printers or for viewing by any application capable of manipulating Postscript data, e.g. Ghostview.

The data are stored in a directory heirarchy based on the CD-ROM volume number, journal, volume and page of the source paper. By convention, this documentation uses Unix-style directory paths to denote the location of files on the CD-ROM, with all paths and filenames in lowercase. The actual directory path and appearance of the filenames on the reader's computer will depend on the operating system and device driver being used. For example, data from CD-ROM Volume V, with bibliographic reference Smith & Jones, 1995, AJ, 110, 1234 would be found in the directory /cdrom/volume5/aj/v110/p1234 on a Unix machine that has mounted the CD-ROM on directory /cdrom. On an MS-DOS machine the path might be E:\VOLUME5\AJ\V110\P1234, assuming the CD-ROM has been installed as disk E:. An Apple Macintosh computer would present the data in a hierarchical set of folders named VOLUME5, AJ, V110, and P1234. Since CD-ROMs can be used by practically every computer and operating system, it is impractical to document every possible configuration.

The kind of information stored in each file can be inferred from the extension appended to each filename, as described in the following list:

DOC

Documentation. Table documents follow the conventions of the the Centre de Donnees astronomiques de Strasbourg (CDS). See the following section for more details.

DAT

Table data stored as Unix ASCII text files.

TEX

TeX or LaTeX source, as provided by the author. Tables in TeX or LaTeX have been formatted into plain ASCII text and stored into a DAT file with the same name.

LOG

Normally seen as the file change.log, this file contains a record of the processing history of the data in that directory. There is a different change.log file for each paper.

FIT

Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) ASCII Table or FITS image data, as supplied by the author.

PS

Standard Postscript line art. All Postscript files have been previewed by the Ghostview X Window Postscript viewer to ensure that they are viewable.

Documentation

The table.doc file is based on the documentation style of the CDS as detailed in the document "Astronomical Catalogues at CDS Adopted Standards", Version 1.4 September 12, 1994. This document is available by anonymous FTP from host cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr in file /pub/cats/doc.tex.

The CDS distributes software that will use the standard documentation and table data to generate FITS ASCII tables. See the CDS document cited above for more information.

Some data files were submitted as LaTeX source files that use the AASTeX "planotable" style files. Version 2.2, 3.0 and 4.0 of the AASTeX macro packages can be found in the directories /dos/aastex22, /doc/aastex30, and /doc/aastex40, respectively. Most AASTeX data tables are formatted with the Version 3.0 package, the other packages have been included for completeness.

Online documentation and browsing capability is provided by this HyperText Markup Language (HTML) document, aascdrom.htm in the main directory of the disc. The HTML documentation on the disc provides links to all papers in all four volumes, including tables of contents, an author index, and an index to every file on the disc. If your CD-ROM system software returns file names in uppercase letters (e.g. DEC Ultrix), use the HTML document AASCDU.HTM. If your CD-ROM system software returns file names in uppercase letters and includes version numbers (e.g. Apple Macintosh), use the HTML document AASCDM.HTM. (Please note that AASCDM.htm is an experimental document included for the first tine on Volume IV.)

Utilizing the documentation requires a World Wide Web (WWW) client program, such as Mosaic from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications or Netscape Navigator from Netscape Communications Corporation. Once the HTML document is loaded into the WWW program, one can follow the HyperText links to any abstract, document, or data file on the disc.

It is beyond the scope of this document to fully describe the installation and use of World Wide Web browsing software. A large amount of information on the World Wide Web can be obtained by anonymous FTP to info.cern.ch in directory /pub/www or in many popular books and magazines that discuss the Internet.

Credits