The Small Bodies Node

Introduction to the PDSSBN and the review process

The PDS Small Bodies Node is a discipline node of the Planetary Data System (PDS) charged with archiving data concerning comets, asteroids, and interplanetary dust. The PDS archive is a deep archive, intended to contain sufficient documentation and ancillary data for future scientists to interpret and use the data long after the original scientists or teams are no longer available to help. It is also intended to provide useful data to researchers in a convenient way at the present time. In reviewing the data you should keep in mind these two complementary goals of preserving the data in a way useable to future generations and making the data easily accessible to current researchers.

How to review the data

The review period will be 28 April - 20 May 2004, and the review meeting will be held on Friday, 21 May 2004 at the Planetary Sciences Institute in Tucson, Arizona. (Here's the agenda.) Please allow yourself enough time to do a thorough review of the data sets.

Follow the step-by-step Review Instructions to insure a complete review of the data. We suggest you read through these instructions at the beginning of the review period and assess how much time will be needed so you can plan accordingly.

For an overview of the review process and what to expect at the review itself, see the Small Bodies Node writeup on The Peer Review Process.

For additional guidance on reviewing the data sets, see the Small Bodies Node writeup What We Need from Data Reviewers.

Those who are brand-new to the PDS may find the following references helpful:

• "A Quick Introduction to PDS" provides an overview of the whole system.
• The Archive Structure and Elements section describes what you'll find in a PDS volume.
• The Data Files and Labels section explains what you'll see in the label files.

The Review Meeting

The Spring 2004 Comet Dataset Review starts on Wedensday, 28 April 2004 and culminates in the review meeting held on Friday, May 21, at the Planetary Sciences Institute, Tucson. PSI is located at 1700 E. Fort Lowell, a couple miles north of the UAz campus. The review meeting will be held in the PSI conference area. This review is being held in conjunction with the 2004 Asteroid review, which happens on Thursday, May 20.

• Logistics and additional information on the review as a whole
• Agenda for the comet meeting on Friday

Meeting Notes:

The list of liens collected during the meeting will be posted here as soon as they are available.

• Comet Liens, 21 May 2004. This is list is available via the link in the Review Data Sets and Liens section below.

The Data

To browse the data, use the links below. Links to download each of the data sets by FTP are available on the individual data set pages. You can also ftp directly to our anonymous ftp site and download them. Instructions for this and for uncompressing and unpacking the zip files are given here.

The lead reviewer is indicated after each data set.

A review booklet (1.26Mb), containing PDF and flat ASCII files of sample labels, data table samples, catalog files, and other supporting documentation is available for downloading. These are the source files for the booklet that will be available at the meeting.

Review Data Sets and Liens

These data are all presented as PDS volumes. The liens for these data sets are available here.

For questions about the data sets, the review, or this web site, please contact Anne Raugh (userid raugh at astro.umd.edu).