DIGITIZED SPECTRA DATA

There are many online databases of digitized spectra of stellar objects at the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) available at the Astronomical Data Center's (ADC) Anonymous FTP site. (There are a few other sources as well)

There is a graphics intensive experimental page with various types of plots based on the data from the NASA spectra database.

There is a shorter version of this page with only the titles of these databases.

Click on author(s) for abstract or click on title for data. The code in parentheses indicates either

  1. (online) = Full paper is available in GIF and PostScript formats
  2. (data) = link to CDS data from ADS abstract
  3. (?) = Failed to find ADS abstract

Optical Spectra


Large Bright Quasar Survey (LBQS)

MMT optical spectral survey of about a thousand bright quasars scanned into GIF and PostScript but not yet digitized into numeric format. Resolution isn't high (about 6 Å) but data is uniform, greatly aiding spectra comparison.

    (online)
  1. Foltz,C.B., Chaffee,F.H., Hewett,P.C., MacAlpine,G.M., Turnshek,D.A.: 1987, AJ., 94, 1423. (online)
    The APM QSO survey. I - Initial MMT results
  2. Foltz,C.B., Chaffee,F.H., Hewett,P.C., Weymann,R.J., Anderson,S.F., MacAlpine,G.M.: 1989, AJ., 98, 1959. (online)
    The large, bright QSO survey. II - QSOs in three equatorial fields
  3. Hewett,P.C., Francis,P.J., Foltz,C.B., Chaffee,F.H., Weymann,R.J.: 1991, AJ., 101, 1121. (online)
    The large, bright QSO survey. III - QSOs in six equatorial fields
  4. Chaffee,F.H., Foltz,C.B., Hewett,P.C., Francis,P.J., Weymann,R.J.: 1991, AJ., 102, 461. (online)
    The large, bright QSO survey. IV - QSOs in two equatorial fields
  5. Morris,S.L., Weymann,R.J., Anderson,S.F., Hewett,P.C., Francis,P.J., Foltz,C.B., Chaffee,F.H., MacAlpine,G.M.: 1991, AJ., 102, 1627. (online)
    The large, bright QSO survey. V - QSOs in three southern fields
  6. Hewett,P.C., Foltz,C.B., Chaffee,F.H.: 1995, AJ., 109, 1498. (online)
    The large bright quasar survey. 6: Quasar catalog and survey parameters (contains table of LBQS)

Ultraviolet spectra


Infrared spectra


Star Catalogs

Various catalogs of Wolf-Rayet, Be star and emission line stars and online publications and magazines relating to hot stars.


There will soon be some spectra stored in GIF, and JPEG here. Spectral plots will be in GIF format, for example the optical spectrum of an F0V dwarf star. Photographic-like spectra will be like this O5V dwarf star (from 3510-4800 Angstroms), or like these four Wolf-Rayet stars. Also see the Astronomy HyperText Book section on stellar spectra


Theory is a good thing but a good experiment lasts for ever.
- Peter Leonidovich Kapitsa, Experiment, Theory, Practice, 1980.
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