The First Byurakan Survey (FBS) is the largest and the first
systematic objective prism survey of the extragalactic sky.
It covers 17,000 sq.deg. in the Northern sky together with
a high galactic latitudes region in the Southern sky.
The FBS has been carried out by B.E. Markarian, V.A. Lipovetski
and J.A. Stepanian in 1965-1980 with the Byurakan Observatory
102/132/213 cm (40"/52"/84") Schmidt telescope using 1.5 deg. prism.
Each FBS plate contains low-dispersion
spectra of some 15,000-20,000 objects; the whole survey consists of
about 20,000,000 objects. The objects selection can be made by their
colour, broad emission or absorption lines, SED in order to
discover, classify and investigate them.
The original aim was to search for galaxies with UV excess
(Mazzarella \& Balzano 1986; Markarian et al. 1989,1997- catalogue No.
VII/172 at CDS). Successively, the amount of spectral information
contained in the plates allowed the development of several other projects
concerning the spectral classification of
Seyfert Galaxies (Weedman and Kachikian 1971), the first definition
of starburst galaxies (Weedman 1977 ), the discovery and investigation of
blue stellar objects (Abrahamian and Mickaelian, 1996,
Mickaelian et al 2001, 2002, CDS catalogue No II/223) and a survey
for late-type stars (Gigoyan et al. 2002).
All these results were obtained by eye inspection of the plates performed
with the aid of a microscope at the Byurakan Observatory.
The number and classes of new objects discovered FBS made clear
the need of open access to FBS for the entire astronomical
community.