This page presents a World-Wide-Web link into the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory's (DAO) Spectroscopic Plate Archive, hosted by the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC). The archive consists of FITS files produced from PDS scans of selected photographic plate observations obtained with the DAO's 1.8-m Plaskett telescope as well as the 1.2-m telescope and McKellar spectrograph. These web pages enable interested researchers to search the DAO Spectroscopic Plate Archive by constraining important criteria such as object name, date, and wavelength and presents the results of the search in a tabular format. The CADC's Data Retrieval facility then allows users to download the data directly to their own computers. To perform such a search simply click the "Plate Archive Query" menu at the top. The "Help" menu will get you started if you're confused by the query form or need information about how the DAO plates have been processed and converted to a convenient digital (FITS) format. See the What's New? link for a summary of recent additions to the archive.

The current release of the DAO Spectroscopic Plate Archive is version 1.0.

The DAO spectroscopic plate collection in its entirety consists of over 16,800 high-dispersion spectrograms exposed at the coudé focus of the 1.2-m DAO telescope and McKellar spectrograph between 1962 and 2000, and more than 93,000 secured at the Cassegrain focus of the DAO 1.8-m telescope and spectrograph between 1918 and 1984. The very great majority of those plates is now in the HIA/DAO plate archive. Since a programme to digitize them with the modified in-house PDS has only recently commenced (and with limited resources) there is currently a rather modest number of digital files available for download. However, if you have questions about the availability of plates of a target of particular interest to you we encourage you to contact Elizabeth Griffin at the HIA (elizabeth.griffin "at" nrc-cnrc.gc.ca) or send an e-mail to HIATelescopesupport "at" nrc-cnrc.gc.ca so that we can search the collection for plates that may be of interest to your research.