What is "simbad"

SIMBAD (the Set of Identifications, Measurements, and Bibliography for Astronomical Data) is an astronomical database of objects beyond the Solar System. It is maintained by the Centre de données astronomiques de Strasbourg (CDS), France.

SIMBAD was created by merging the Catalog of Stellar Identifications (CSI) and the Bibliographic Star Index as they existed at the Meudon Computer Centre until 1979, and then expanded by additional source data from other catalogues and the academic literature. The first on-line interactive version, known as Version 2, was made available in 1981. Version 3, developed in the C language and running on UNIX stations at the Strasbourg Observatory, was released in 1990. Fall of 2006 saw the release of Version 4 of the database, now stored in PostgreSQL, and the supporting software, now written entirely in Java.

As of 12 December 2015, SIMBAD contains information for 8,028,670 objects under 22,589,372 different names, with 312,792 bibliographical references and 12,529,307 bibliographic citations.

The minor planet 4692 SIMBAD was named in its honour.