The AAS CD-ROM Series
Astrophysics on Disc
Volume VIII, 1997 June

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

  Preface

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  The purpose of this HyperText Markup Language (HTML) documentation is to allow users of the AAS CD-ROM to browse the disc efficiently using the popular World Wide Web clients such as Netscape Navigator, NCSA Mosaic or Lynx. In addition to this document, an Author Index lists all of the contributing authors, Tables of Contents list the bibliographic references to the papers on the CD-ROM, and a Directory of Files contains links to every data file and document on the CD-ROM. By using an HTML browser, one can navigate these links to any point on the disc quickly and efficiently.

  NOTE: If you are using a Unix computer with CD-ROM driver software that presents file names in UPPERCASE (e.g., Ultrix), a version of this HTML documentation has been provided with Uniform Resource Locator (URL) file references in UPPERCASE. If you encounter difficulty following links in this document, try AASCDU.HTM, instead. If your CD-ROM driver presents filenames in UPPERCASE with a trailing ";1" (e.g., Apple Macintosh), try AASCDM.HTM;1.

  Please forward comments, questions, and constructive criticism of this HTML documentation to cdrom-info@aas.org.

  Introduction

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  This is the eighth volume in a series of CD-ROMs containing data published in papers from the American Astronomical Society's Astronomical Journal, Astrophysical Journal, Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, and Icarus. Also included are data from the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

  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, graphic line art, and imagery from 30 papers. A complete table of contents is presented below.

  CD-ROM Contents

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  The table of contents outlined below contains hypertext links to all papers that have contributed data appearing on the AAS CD-ROM Series, Volume VIII, 1997 June.

  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 on the volume.

  • Author Index
  • Table of Contents
    1. Volume VIII, 1997 June
       • Astronomical Journal
       • Astrophysical Journal
       • Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series
       • Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
       • Directory of Files

  CD-ROM Format

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  The AAS CD-ROM is formatted for the ISO 9660 Standard, Data Interchange Level 1. Filenames at this interchange level are restricted to at most eight characters, followed by a full stop, ".", followed by at most a three character extension, followed by a version number suffix, which will be ";1" in every case. The appearance of the filenames (upper or lower case, with or without version numbers) depends on the computing platform, operating system, and device driver software used to access the CD-ROM. The reader should consult their system documentation for information particular to their home site's configuration.

  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 VIII, with bibliographic reference R. O. Marzke et al. 1996, AJ, 112, 1803 would be found in the directory /cdrom/volume8/aj/v112/p1803 on a Unix machine that has mounted the CD-ROM on directory /cdrom. On an MS-DOS machine the path might be E:\VOLUME8\AJ\V112\P1803, 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 VOLUME8, AJ, V112, and P1803. 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.

  Other files, such as LaTeX style files can be found in various directories.

  Documentation

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  Each data set is accompanied by at least three pieces of ancilliary documentation generated by the American Astronomical Society in preparation of publishing the data on CD-ROM. These document files are: abstract.doc, an ASCII representation of the abstract from the printed paper; change.log, a log of the processing history of the data; and table.doc, the documentation for the ASCII table(s).

  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 can be loaded into any World Wide Web browser and provides links to all papers in this volume, 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;1.

  Credits

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  Managing Editor, The Astrophysical Journal: Helmut A. Abt
  Editor, The Astronomical Journal: Paul Hodge
  Editor, Icarus: Joseph A. Burns
  Managing Editor, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific: Howard Bond
  Executive Officer of the AAS: Robert W. Milkey
  Production Manager, The Astrophysical Journal: Kim Langford
  AAS Senior Associate: Peter B. Boyce
  CD-ROM formatting and documentation: Lee E. Brotzman
  CD-ROM disc and packaging design: Stephen J. Alexander
  

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  MS-DOS is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Macintosh is a registered trademark of Apple Computers. Postscript is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated.

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  Prepared by Lee E. Brotzman, Advanced Data Solutions