Washington Double Star Catalog

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The Washington Double Star Catalog, or WDS, is a catalog of double stars, maintained at the United States Naval Observatory. The catalog contains positions, magnitudes, proper motions and spectral types and has entries for (as of July 2006) 102,387 pairs of double stars. The catalog also includes multiple stars. In general, a multiple star with n components will be represented by entries in the catalog for n-1 pairs of stars.

[edit] History

The database used to construct the WDS originated at Lick Observatory, where it was used to construct the Index Catalog of Visual Double Stars, published in 1963. In 1965, under the initiative of Charles Worley, it was transferred to the Naval Observatory. It has since been augmented by a large number of measurements, from Hipparcos and Tycho, speckle interferometry, and other sources.