Telescope Data Center Harvard Plate Collection Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Scanning the Harvard University Plate Stacks

CreoScitex Scan of an MC plate of M44 from the Harvard Plate Stacks

We scanned Plate MC39237, an 8x10 photgraphic plate taken on the night of January 17-18, 1975, using a CreoScitex EverSmart Supreme in its accelerated mode at 1200 bits per inch of spatial resolution and 14 bits of intensity resolution. The resulting TIFF image contained 16 bits each of R, G, and B for 11470 x 9312 pixels. The means of the three colors taken and written into a 16-bit FITS-format image file. The WCSTools imstar program was used to find the positions of stars in the image, and the WCSTools imty2 program was used to fit a world coordinate system to the image.

Positive with North Up

Click here to see the negative with south up, east left
Click here to see Tycho-2 stars on the positive with north up, east left