COMMISSION 27 OF THE I. A. U.
         INFORMATION BULLETIN ON VARIABLE STARS
                      Number 3422

                                      Konkoly Observatory
                                      Budapest
                                      16 January 1990

                                      HU ISSN 0374 - 0676


     IAU ARCHIVES OF UNPUBLISHED OBSERVATIONS OF
                VARIABLE STARS:
      ELECTRONIC STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL OF DATA

New data can now be submitted to the IAU Archives
electronically by means of tape diskette or electronic mail.
Copies of certain files already existing in the the Archives can
also be sent to astronomers in electronic form.

1. Introduction

   The Archives of Unpublished Observations of Variable Stars
was created to provide permanent archives in different parts of
the world. The Archives can replace lengthy and expensive
tables in scientific publications by a single reference to the
archival file number. Furthermore, many valuable observations
are never used for scientific publications, and the Archives
makes such observations available to other astronomers at a
time when they might become very important. Information on
existing files can be found in the Publ. Astron. Soc. Pacific (e.g.
Breger 1988) and Bull. Inform. CDS (e.g. Jaschek and Breger
1988). Paper copies of existing files can be obtained from one
of the three archives:

Dr. P. Dubois                  P. D. Hingley, Librarian
Centre de Donnees Stellaires   Royal Astronomical Society
Observatoire de Strasbourg     Burlington House
11, rue de l'Universite        London, W1V 0NL
F-67000 Strasbourg             Great Britain
France

Dr. Yu. S. Romanov
Odessa Astronomical Observatory
Shevchenko Park
Odessa 270014, USSR

New files can be submitted by mailing five copies of the cover
sheet (listing a reference to a published paper or details of the
data) as well as three paper copies of the data to the
coordinator (Michel Breger at the address given at the end of
this announcement).

2. How to submit new files by electronic means.

Astronomers wishing to submit new files electronically should
contact the coordinator in order to obtain a file number. After
the file number has been received, the astronomer can submit
the contents of the cover sheet as well as the data to the Centre
de Donnees Stellaires by magnetic tape, diskette or electronic
mail. The Centre requests that a copy of the data should also be
sent to the Centre in paper form. Information on how to
communicate with the Centre is given below.

The Centre de Donnees Stellaires will mail paper copies of both
the cover sheet and the data to the other two branches of the
Archives in Great Britain and USSR as well as the coordinator.

3. How to obtain copies of existing files electronically.

Copies of some existing files can be obtained electronically free
of charge by contacting the Centre de Donnees Stellaires (see
below). Lists of the available files in the Archives are announced
regularly (IBVS, Bull. Inform. CDS) and detailed reports on the
file contents are published in the Publ. Astron. Soc. Pacific. In
the future these lists will contain information on which files are
also available by electronic means.

Copies of all existing files can, of course, still be requested in
paper form from the three archives.

 4. How to communicate with the Centre de Donnees
Stellaires.

Data can be submitted to the Centre on poper as well as in
machine-readable form. The following specifications should be
observed:
Files: pure ASCII.
Text processor file: None or standard Latex only,

Magnetic tape: Nolabel. A description of the tape should be
provided (number of files, block size, LRECL, content etc.),
Diskette: MS/DOS format only, 5 1/4 inch: densities 360K or
1.2M, 3 1/2 inch: density 720K only,

 Electronic Mail: SPAN CDSXB1::IAU27.

Furthermore, a paper copy of the cover sheet and the data
should also be provided to the Centre de Donnees Stellaires in
order to check the electronic file received for possible problems
of truncation, character transformations etc.


Michel Breger ( 1 ), Carlos Jaschek ( 2 ), Pascal Dubois ( 2 )

(1)  Institute for Astronomy, Turkenschanzstr. 17, A-1180 Wien,
   Austria
(2) Centre de Donnees stellaires, 11, rue de l'Universite,
   F-67000 Strasbourg, France

References

Breger, M.: 1988, Publ. Astron. Soc. Pacific 100, 751 [BIBCODE 1988PASP..100..751B ]
Jaschek, C., Breger, M.: 1988 Bull. Inform. CDS 35, 93 [BIBCODE 1988BICDS..35...93J ]