Developments of the open cluster database WEBDA

Abstract

The database WEBDA offers a significant amount of data concerning open clusters. It is intended to provide a reliable picture of the available data and knowledge on open clusters and to offer a wide access to the existing observations for professional as well as amateur astronomers. It includes astrometric data in the form of coordinates, rectangular positions, and proper motions, photometric data in the major systems in which star clusters have been observed, but also spectroscopic data like spectral classification, radial velocities, and rotational velocities. It also contains miscellaneous types of supplementary data like membership probabilities, orbital elements of spectroscopic binaries, and periods for different kinds of variable stars. We present the upcoming new interface and tools, which are needed to visualise and analyse the increasing amount of data from wide field imagers, allsky surveys, and deeper investigations. Furthermore, we discuss the prospects of WEBDA in the era of large sky surveys and its extension to star forming regions as well as stellar associations © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012.