The sixth data release of the Digital Access to a Sky Century @ Harvard project (DASCH DR6) was released on January 31, 2019.
The material below documents the status of DR6 at the time of its release. DASCH DR6, along with all previous DASCH data releases, was not archived as a distinct entity, and is no longer directly accessible. It has been superseded by DR7. This release description page is preserved for historical reference.
Spatial and Temporal Coverage
DR6 adds coverage of Galactic latitudes b = +0 to +15 deg,
joining results from DR1, which includes the 5 Development
Fields
from which the hardware and software pipelines for
DASCH were developed; and DR2 through DR5. These represent ~36% of
the Harvard plate data (1885 - 1992; full-sky excluding spectra
and rejected plates). A brief overview of DASCH is given in
Grindlay et al. (2012)
Opening the 100-Year Window for Time Domain Astronomy
in
arXiv:1211.1051 or IAU Symposium Vol. 285 p
29-34 . Additional project papers are listed in the DASCH publications
page.
Digitized images (11 micron pixels) of ~195,000 plates and their fully
reduced WCS solutions and SExtractor-based photometry of every
resolved object are available from this Data Release from the ~230Tb
of data on disk now available. Light curves (LCs) typically include
1500 points for an object with magnitude B ~12-13. LCs may be
retrieved from input coordinates or SIMBAD object names for up to 10
at a time, and LC plots, data and images for each then downloaded
individually.
We originally planed to release additional 15 degree increments in decreasing galactic latitude. In October, 2019, we revised plans to make DR7 through DR12 a single combined release of the Southern galactic hemisphere. The maps at the left illustrate this release strategy in galactic and equatorial coordinates: green indicates released areas and yellow indicates areas currently being scanned. (NOTE (2024): This historical information can be ignored; see DR7.)
The following tables show the extent of released sky regions and the number of plates currently assigned to each region. Because many plates span multiple release regions, each plate is assigned to the release region which covers the most area on the plate. These numbers can not be final until we have completed both the logbook transcription process and full astrometric processing for all of the plates. We are currently releasing regions when we have scanned over 80% of plates currently estimated to have their plate centers in the new release region.
| Region | Galactic Longitude (l) degrees | Galactic Latitude (b) degrees | RA hours | RA degrees | Dec degrees | Radius degrees | Square degrees | Plates |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DR1 | 0 to 360 | 75.00 to 90.00 | 12h51m | 192.86 | 27.13 | 15 | 1211 | 9075 |
| DR2 | 0 to 360 | 60.00 to 75.00 | 1978 | 11962 | ||||
| DR3 | 0 to 360 | 45.00 to 60.00 | 3274 | 28368 | ||||
| DR4 | 0 to 360 | 30.00 to 45.00 | 4192 | 32861 | ||||
| DR5 | 0 to 360 | 15.00 to 30.00 | 4880 | 55426 | ||||
| DR6 | 0 to 360 | 0.00 to 15.00 | 5201 | 57499 |
The Development Fields
are listed in the Table below and are
centered on the coordinates given. Since adjacent fields have not yet
been scanned, they are increasingly incomplete with increasing radius.
The 3C273 field has been integrated into DR2 and DR3; the M44 field has
been integrated into DR4 and DR5; and the Kepler field has been
integrated into DR5 and DR6. Additional fields will be integrated into
the Production scanning as they are covered in the data release plan
described above. The counts of plates do not add up to the total plates
in the release because many plates cover portions of multiple release
regions.
| Region | Galactic Longitude (l) degrees | Galactic Latitude (b) degrees | RA hours | RA degrees | Dec degrees | Radius degrees | Square degrees | Plates |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| M44 | 205.91 | 32.48 | 8h40m | 130.09 | 19.67 | 5 | 78.5 | 14281 |
| 3C273 | 289.96 | 64.36 | 12h29m | 187.27 | 2.05 | 5 | 78.5 | 11302 |
| Baade's Window | 1.03 | -3.91 | 18h03m | 270.88 | -30.02 | 5 | 78.5 | 13488 |
| Kepler Field | 76.34 | 13.45 | 19h22m | 290.73 | 44.50 | 8 | 201.1 | 23159 |
| LMC | 280.47 | -32.89 | 5h23m | 80.89 | -69.76 | 5 | 78.5 | 12108 |
Release Photometry
An overview of plate processing and image magnitude calibration appears on the DASCH Pipeline Overview page. For each plate, the pipeline generates three sets of magnitude measurements, one for each of three calibration catalogs. The ATLAS All-Sky Stellar Reference Catalog uses Pan-STARRS DR1 supplemented with other catalogs to give the best photometric accuracy in SDSS g and r to 19th magnitude over the entire sky. The AAVSO Photometry All-Sky Survey (APASS) Release 8 Catalog uses Johnson B and V magnitudes which better match the unfiltered photographic blue of most of the plates. The GSC2.3.2 catalog provides the broadest magnitude coverage in Johnson B and V but with limited accuracy. A fourth catalog, the Kepler Input Catalog (KIC) using SDSS g and r, is no longer actively used in the DASCH project because of its limited sky coverage.
Magnitude Counts Per Year
The leftmost plot show that the released data contains over 15,395,000 ATLAS refcat2 calibrated magnitude estimates [sic: this number must be missing another three zeros] and 14,119,000,000 GSC2.3.2 calibrated magnitude estimates spanning the years 1885 to 1989. The data comes from 47 telescopes which may be divided into 33 wide field patrol telescopes with scales greater than 350 arcsec/mm and objective diameters of 1 to 3 inches; and 14 narrow field telescopes with objective diameters of 4 to 24 inches. The main patrol programs ran from about 1900 to the 1950's. A smaller patrol program using six Damon telescopes with 1.65" diameter objectives ran from 1970 to 1990.
The middle plot on the left shows that the APASS calibrated dataset contains over 13,194,000,000 magnitude estimates with limited coverage deeper than 15th magnitude.
The release contains 50,307,000 lightcurves calibrated with the ATLAS refcat2; 38,329,000 lightcurves calibrated with the GSC2.3.2 catalog; and 34,559,000 lightcurves calibrated with the APASS DR8 catalog. The third plot shows the median number of points for any given lightcurve as function of magnitude. This third plot is dominated by the patrol plate measurements.
Photometry Accuracy
The Atlas refcat2 dataset may be divided into 10,097,000,000 images matched to the catalog and 2,522,000,000 unmatched images; the GSC2.3.2 dataset may be divided into 9,532,000,000 images matched to the catalog and 2,052,000,000 unmatched images; the APASS DR8 dataset may be divided into 9,062,000,000 matched images and 1,630,000,000 unmatched images; and the Kepler Input Calibration dataset contains 262,066,000 matched images and 325,630,000 unmatched images. The unmatched images are mostly plate defects, astrometry matching errors, multiple exposure matching errors, and asteroids.
The plots on the left use better quality matched images where the quality is described by a set of flags (see AFLAGS). There must be at least 10 good quality points in a lightcurve to allow calculation of a reasonable lightcurve RMS. The leftmost plot assumes that the median lightcurve RMS removes variable stars. The detailed RMS histograms for each magnitude range appear in the plots on the right for each calibration catalog.
Release Fields Coverage Plots vs. Limiting Magnitude
The first plot on the left shows the deepest limiting magnitude per plate for the GSC2.3.2 and APASS DR8 calibrations. The second plot shows that the wide field patrol plates have a limiting magnitude of approximately 12 before circa 1935 and 14 after that date. Stars deeper than 16th magnitude have limited coverage from non-patrol plates after 1935.