SIMBAD Astronomical Database - CDS (Strasbourg) (original) (raw)

What is SIMBAD, and what is it not ?%

WHAT IS SIMBAD

The purpose of Simbad is to provide information on astronomical objects of interest which have been studied in scientific articles.

Simbad is a dynamic database, updated every working day.

It provides the bibliography, as well as available basic information such as the nature of the object, its coordinates, magnitudes, proper motions and parallax, velocity/redshift, size, spectral or morphological type, and the multitude of names (identifiers) given in the literature. The CDS team also performs cross-identifications based on the compatibility of several parameters, in the limit of a reasonably good astrometry.

Simbad is a meta-compilation built from what is published in the literature, and from our expertise on cross-identifications. By construction it is highly inhomogeneous as data come from any kind of instruments at all wavelenghts with any resolution and astrometry, and different names from one publication to another.

Simbad is not a catalogue, and should not be used as a catalogue. The CDS also provides the VizieR database which contains published lists of objects, as well as most very large surveys. The idea now is to use both Simbad and VizieR as complementary research tools.