Vienna Atomic Line Data-Base
Electronic Mail Service

written by N.E.Piskunov
Vienna, June 1994

VALDADM revision 1.2.1
Dec 30,1994

Rationale

Vienna Atomic Line Database (VALD) is a collection of atomic line parameters of astronomical interest and provides tools for selecting subsets of lines for typical astrophysical applications: line identification, chemical composition and radial velocity measurements, model atmosphere calculations etc.

VALD Electronic Mail Service (VALD-EMS) is the main interface for accessing VALD by external users. VALD-EMS is aimed to endorse the following main principles of VALD access:

• subsets of spectral line lists are extracted with the tools, consistent with the specific astronomical problem. VALD strongly discourages bulk data transfer and concentrates more on intelligent search and extraction procedures;
• VALD provides data sets and extraction tools suitable for several spectroscopic applications;
• VALD is regularly updated with critically evaluated data sets. The VALD project team experts investigate the statistical properties of the data, extensively compare the results obtained with different data sources, and establish the quality rating for each new source;
• VALD computers are not dedicated to the VALD project alone, so the correct scheduling is important.

Mail access lets VALD automatically process requests and queue them for execution on VALD computers at the most convenient time. It also allows us to have control over the size of the data traffic and to register VALD users.

Using VALD data

If the VALD data was used in your research work, we would appreciate the acknowledgment of VALD and of the VALD tools that you find most useful.

We would also appreciate receiving a preprint or reprint of the relevant papers at the following address:

VALD project
Institut fuer Astronomie
Tuerkenschanzstrasse 17,
A-1180 Wien, Austria
c/o W.W.Weiss