The CATS database: astrophysical research tool

Oleg V. Verkhodanov, Sergei A. Trushkin

Special astrophysical observatory, Nizhnij Arkhyz, Russia,

Heinz Andernach

Depto. de Astronomia, Universidad de Guanajuato, Guanajuato, Mexico, email: heinz@astro.ugto.mx

Vladimir N. Chernenkov

Special astrophysical observatory, Nizhnij Arkhyz, Russia, e-mail: vch@sao.ru

We describe the current status of CATS, a publicly accessible database maintained at SAO RAS (http://cats.sao.ru) allowing one to search in hundreds of catalogs of astronomical objects discovered all along the electromagnetic spectrum. Our emphasis is mainly laid on catalogs of radio continuum sources observed from 10 MHz to 245 Ghz, secondly on catalogs of objects such as radio and active stars, X-ray binaries, planetary nebulae, HII regions, supernova remnants, pulsars, nearby and radio galaxies, AGN and quasars. CATS also includes the catalogs from the largest extragalactic surveys, like NVSS, FIRST, WENSS, VLSS, TXS, GB6, SUMSS, WMAP, IRAS, 2MASS, SDSS, ROSAT, PGC, MCG, etc. In 2008 CATS comprised a total of $\sim10^9$ records from over 400 catalogs in the radio, IR, optical and X-ray windows, including most of RATAN-600 catalogs and compiled cataloges. CATS offers several ways to be used in astrophysical research ... via Web-interface and e-mail. The most often used ones are selection in celesital area and cross-identification of object list. CATS is being expanded and updated, both with newly published catalogs as well as older ones which were prepared by us in electronic form for the first time. Since its creation in 1997 CATS has managed about 10^5 calculation tasks. Currently it is used by external users ~50000 times per month on average.