Washington Double Star Catalog

Three earlier double star catalogs in the 20th century, those by Burnham (BDS; 1906), Innes (SDS; 1927), and Aitken (ADS; 1932), each covered only a portion of the sky. Both the IDS and the WDS cover the entire sky, and the WDS is intended to contain all known visual double stars for which at least one differential measure has been published. The WDS is continually updated as published data become available.

Prior to this, two major updates have been published (Worley & Douglass 1984, 1997). The Washington Double Star Catalog (WDS) has seen numerous changes since the last major release of the catalog. The application of many techniques and considerable industry over the past few years has yielded unprecedented gains in both the number of systems and the number of measures.

This version of the WDS catalog was first created at the HEASARC in March 2002 based on the USNO online version (available at either <a href="crf.usno.navy.mil/wds/">https://crf.usno.navy.mil/wds/</a> or <a href="astro.gsu.edu/wds/">http://www.astro.gsu.edu/wds/</a>), and is updated by the HEASARC on at least a weekly basis. The table schema was last revised in February 2005. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .