[AstroPy] Updated telarchive + fetchsdss

[Peter Erwin]

Hi,

This is an announcement of an updated version (1.3) of my quick-and-dirty,
Python-based telescope archive search tool, available here:
    http://www.mpe.mpg.de/~erwin/code/
(A short summary of what it does is appended below.)

New features (and fixes):

- Updated to work with DR6 of SDSS.

- Restored access to the older version of the Isaac Newton Group Archive.

- The package now includes a separate script called "fetchsdss", which allows
for command-line retrieval of FITS (or JPEG) images from the SDSS archive
via object name, coordinates, or SDSS field specification.


[previous summary, updated:]
"Telarchive" is a command-line program which simplifies searching various
public telescope archives to see if they might have data on a particular
astronomical object or part of the sky.  This includes the HST and general
MAST archive, as well as the ESO, UKIRT, CFHT, and AAT ground-based
archives, and imaging data from Data Release 6 (DR6) of the Sloan Digital
Sky Survey.  The NOAO Science Archive is also included, though it has very
little publically available data at this point.  Recent additions are SMOKA
(the archive for Subaru and several older Japanese telescopes) and the
Gemini Science Archive.  The Isaac Newton Group Archive is also searched,
but only for data from 2001 or earlier (newer data is handled by the new
archive interface, which is currently not usable by this program).

The program won't *get* the data for you, of course (but see "fetchsdss"
for SDSS images), or even tell you very much about it -- for that, you
still need to visit the individual archive web pages.  But it will save you
lots of clicking and typing in web-page forms if you just want to find out
if there is *any* data available.

An example (searching within a 2-arcminute box centered on the planetary
nebula NGC 7027; searching on coordinates directly is also possible):

$ telarchive "ngc 7027" 2.0
         SIMBAD (Simbad 4, France):  Found object coordinates: RA = 21 
07 01.593, Dec = +42 14 10.18

Searching archives for ngc 7027 (RA = 21 07 01.593, dec = +42 14 10.18),
with search box =  2.0 arcmin...
         ING Archive (old interface): Data exists! ("A total of 577 
were retrieved")
                 143 images, 391 spectra, 43 unclassified
                 JKT -- RBS (1), FWHL (2), AGBX (102);  INT -- WFC 
(9), PFCU (30), IDS (66), MES (17), FOS_1 (10);
                 WHT -- TAURUS_2 (5), unknown (43), ISIS_BLUE_ARM 
(159), UES (58), ISIS_RED_ARM (75)
         Sloan Digital Sky Survey (DR6) SQL Search: No data found.
         NOAO Science Archive: No data found.
         AAT Archive: No data found.
         UKIRT Archive: Data exists! ("A total of 943 were retrieved")
         CFHT Archive: Data exists! ("A total of 213 records were retrieved")
         ESO Archive: No data found.
         HST Archive (at ESO): Data exists! ("A total of 84 were found")
                 -- 6 WFPC2, 24 WF, 1 PC, 13 NICMOS, 3 FOC, 24 STIS, 13 FOS
         Multimission Archive at STScI (MAST): Data exists!
                 FUSE (2); IUE (34); COPERNICUS (1); GALEX (29)
         Gemini Science Archive: Data exists! ("A total of 45 records 
were retrieved")
         SMOKA (Subaru Mitaka Okayama Kiso Archive): Data exists! 
("698 frames are found.")
                 348 images and 350 spectra
                 Subaru -- OHS/CISCO (9), Subaru -- IRCS (5), Subaru 
-- COMICS (331), Kiso -- 1k CCD (3),
                 Subaru -- OHS/CISCO (29), Subaru -- IRCS (6), Subaru 
-- COMICS (281), Okayama -- SNG (3),
                Okayama -- HIDES (31)


It's available as a gzipped tar file here:
    http://www.mpe.mpg.de/~erwin/code/

There are installation instructions/suggestions in the README file.
(And feel free to email with questions or suggestions about it!)

cheers,

Peter

-- 
=============================================================
Peter Erwin                   Max-Planck-Insitute for Extraterrestrial
erwin at mpe.mpg.de              Physics, Giessenbachstrasse
tel. +49 (0)89 30000 3695     85748 Garching, Germany
fax  +49 (0)89 30000 3495     http://www.mpe.mpg.de/~erwin