UBV-beta Database for LS Stars

(Excerpt from the "intro.txt" file) Between 1959 and 1971, the Hamburg and Warner and Swasey Observatories published a seven-volume survey listing intrinsically luminous stars (hereafter "LS" objects) - mostly OB stars, as well as a number of A, F, and G supergiants and Wolf-Rayet stars - within about ten degrees of the plane of the Milky Way to a limiting photographic magnitude of approximately 13.5. Based on objective-prism surveys of dispersion 580 Angstrom per millimeter at Hydrogen-gamma, these catalogs have served as starting points for numerous investigations of galactic structure and the characteristics of massive stars.

Much fundamental data on the LS stars now exists distributed throughout the astronomical literature. This work describes a compilation of published photoelectric UBV-Beta photometry and spectral classifications nominally on the MK system for the LS stars, as well as an extensive cross-identification table linking LS numbers and other commonly-used identifiers such as HD, BD, CD, CPD and HR numbers. At this writing, the UBV-Beta portion of the database covers both the Northern and Southern LS stars, whereas MK classifications have as yet only been fully compiled for the Southern stars; compilation of MK types for the Northern LS stars is as yet incomplete, but ongoing.