UPSA Object Registry

Sources

and what we owe them

This register holds nothing of its own. Every value on every card was measured by someone else, published in a paper, and curated by one of the archives below. We copy, keep the citation attached, and say where it came from.

ArchiveWhat we takeHeld hereTerms
SIMBAD
CDS, Strasbourg		 Object identity, type, position, cross-identifiers and the per-paper measurement tables — parallaxes, distances, proper motions, velocities, diameters, metallicities, spectral types, photometry. 8,078 values ODbL. Cite Wenger et al. 2000, A&AS 143, 9.
Gaia DR3
ESA / DPAC		 Astrometry and astrophysical parameters for the Gaia source matched to an object: parallax, proper motion, radial velocity, G magnitude, effective temperature, surface gravity, metallicity, RUWE. 3,222 values Gaia Collaboration 2023, A&A 674, A1.
NASA Exoplanet Archive
IPAC / Caltech		 Confirmed planets, their host stars, and every published parameter set behind them, each with its own reference. 195,794 values Operated by Caltech under contract with NASA.
JPL Small-Body Database
NASA / JPL-Caltech		 Every known asteroid and comet: designations, orbital elements, observation arcs, diameters, albedos, rotation periods, spectral classes. 0 values Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.
JPL Horizons The major bodies — the Sun, the planets, dwarf planets and natural satellites — with the physical data block JPL publishes for each. 789 values Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.
NED
NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database		 Extragalactic identity and redshifts with their references, fetched per object through the current API. 12 values Operated by Caltech under contract with NASA.
VizieR
CDS, Strasbourg		 The index of published catalogues, and the spectral energy distribution assembled across them for an object's field. 57,655 values ODbL. Cite Ochsenbein et al. 2000, A&AS 143, 23.

Drawn on top

the map's furniture, not its data

The sky map's constellation figures and boundaries and the Milky Way outline come from d3-celestial by Olaf Frohn, under the BSD 3-clause licence. They are scenery: they help you find your way around, and no measurement in this register depends on them. Everything that carries a number — the density cells, the stars, the wedge, the neighbourhood — is the register's own holdings.

Licensing. The SIMBAD- and VizieR-derived parts of this register are distributed by CDS under the Open Database Licence, and are re-published here under the same terms. NASA and JPL material is in the public domain, used with the attribution those services ask for. Nothing here is an original measurement by UPSA, and nothing here should be cited as one — cite the paper in the reference column.

Update log

last pass per archive
ArchivePassFinished (UTC)RowsStatus
JPL Horizons major-bodies 2026-08-14 17:11 197 ok
JPL SBDB small-bodies 2026-08-14 17:28 1,560,329 ok
NASA Exoplanet Archive planets 2026-08-14 17:08 6,336 ok
registry dedupe 2026-08-14 17:51 12,657 ok
SIMBAD ident nbref>=12 2026-08-14 17:45 3,839,345 ok
VizieR catalog-index 2026-08-14 17:04 64,148 ok

The register refreshes once a week and deepens continuously as objects are opened.