The Washington Double Star Catalog

The Washington Double Star Catalog (WDS) maintained by the United States Naval Observatory is the world's principal database of astrometric double and multiple star information. The WDS Catalog contains positions (J2000), discoverer designations, epochs, position angles, separations, magnitudes, spectral types, proper motions, and, when available, Durchmusterung numbers and notes for the components of 115,769 systems based on 824,698 means (as of 1 January 2012). The catalog is updated nightly.

Contents:

• Introduction and Growth of the WDS
  • Cross-reference files (WDS/IDS/ADS/BDS, Bayer/Flamsteed, etc.)
  • Change in WDS format
• Unpublished Measures
• Neglected Doubles
• Hipparcos, Tycho-2, & the TDSC
• Duplicate discovery designations, Arcsecond coordinates and other topics
• Single Stars
• Available files
• Requests and Acknowledgments
  
  

• WDS Catalog (~14.2MB)

  • 00-06 hour section (~3.1MB)
  • 06-12 hour section (~4.0MB)
  • 12-18 hour section (~2.7MB)
  • 18-24 hour section (~4.5MB)
• Format of the current WDS
• Notes file for the WDS (~2.0MB)
• References and discoverer codes (~2.2MB)

If the WDS and associated databases were helpful for your research work, the following acknowledgement would be appreciated:

"This research has made use of the Washington Double Star Catalog maintained at the U.S. Naval Observatory."

A notification of references to relevant papers is appreciated.