SIMBAD Astronomical Database - CDS (Strasbourg)

What is SIMBAD, and what is it not ? %WHAT IS SIMBAD


The purpose of Simbad is to provide information on astronomical objects of interest which have been studied in scientific articles.

Simbad is a dynamic database, updated every working day.

It provides the bibliography, as well as available basic information such as the nature of the object, its coordinates, magnitudes, proper motions and parallax, velocity/redshift, size, spectral or morphological type, and the multitude of names (identifiers) given in the literature. The CDS team also performs cross-identifications based on the compatibility of several parameters, in the limit of a reasonably good astrometry.

Simbad is a meta-compilation built from what is published in the literature, and from our expertise on cross-identifications. By construction it is highly inhomogeneous as data come from any kind of instruments at all wavelenghts with any resolution and astrometry, and different names from one publication to another.

Simbad is not a catalogue, and should not be used as a catalogue. The CDS also provides the VizieR database which contains published lists of objects, as well as most very large surveys. The idea now is to use both Simbad and VizieR as complementary research tools.

What is SIMBAD ?
Queries
basic search
by identifier
by coordinates
by criteria
reference query
scripts
TAP queries
 
Output options
 
 
Documentation
Object types
Nomenclature & Dictionary
Recommendations for Data Publication
 
User's guide
Measurement description
 
List of journals
User annotations documentation
Query by urls
Acknowledgment
Information
Presentation
 
Image thumbnails
 
Mobile version
 
SimWatch
 
Release:
SIMBAD4 1.8 - 2024-02
Release history

Content
The SIMBAD astronomical database provides basic data, cross-identifications, bibliography and measurements for astronomical objects outside the solar system.
SIMBAD can be queried by object name, coordinates and various criteria. Lists of objects and scripts can be submitted.
Links to some other on-line services are also provided.
Basic search
identifier, coordinates (radius=10 arcmin), or bibcode
          help
Install the Simbad basic search in your tool bar

Acknowledgment
If the Simbad database was helpful for your research work,
the following acknowledgment would be appreciated:

This research has made use of the SIMBAD database,
operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France


2000,A&AS,143,9 , "The SIMBAD astronomical database", Wenger et al.

Statistics
Simbad contains on 2024.03.19
17,121,904 objects
62,579,821 identifiers
432,865 bibliographic references
39,092,873 citations of objects in papers
15,432 acronyms described for Simbad


SIMBAD on the Web is the WWW interface to the SIMBAD database. It offers the following functionalities:

Moreover, the interface provides links with many other data services :

SIMBAD is on-boarded to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) to serve the astronomical community.