Benoît Joguet (ESO, Chile), Patricio F. Ortiz (Centre de Doneés Astronomiques de Strasbourg), Luc Binette (Instituto de Astronomía, UNAM)
ADEL, the Astrophysical Database on Emission Lines was conceived to compile spectroscopic observations of Emission Line Objects obtained since the advent of electronic detectors and make them available to the astronomical community through the World Wide Web. The project relies on the contribution of observers who wish to ``deposit'' their data in the system after its publication.
ADEL offers its users a growing collection of reduced spectra, which so far amounts to about 400 Active Galactic Nuclei, 400 HIIor Starburst galaxies, 80 Herbig-Haro objects. Each object is characterized by parameters like position, apparent brightness, color(s), redshift or distances; relevant observation information (observer, telescope, instrument, spectral resolution, S/N, exposure time, etc.); links to abstracts (ADS) for data references; and most importantly, fluxes, and equivalent widths for a number of important lines found in each object's spectrum.
A highly flexible database system (datOZ) (Ortiz, 1997) let users select, retrieve, and plot the information of their interest, with special focus towards line ratios (diagnostic diagrams), from which most of the physical conditions characterizing the emitting gas can be deduced. As the database will rapidly grow following the advent of large surveys of galaxies (e.g. SLOAN), diagnostic diagrams used for classifying objects such as those found in Veilleux and Osterbrock (1987) will be refined (or new ones will be discovered).