[AstroPy] Updated telarchive (Python tool for quick and dirty telescopy archive searches)

[Peter Erwin]

Hi,

This is an announcement of an updated version of my quick-and-dirty,
Python-based telescope archive search tool.  (A short summary of what 
it does is
appended below.)

New features (and fixes):
    Updated to work  with SIMBAD 4, so coordinate lookup works again
    Assorted compatibility fixes with certain archives
    Updated to work with DR5 of SDSS
    Added searching of SMOKA (Subaru and other Japanese telescopes)
    Preliminary support for searching the Gemini Science Archive.

New "defects":
    Searching the Isaac Newton Group Archive currently does not work, due to
the fact that the archive interface is being upgraded and is thus in 
a state of flux.
I have hopes that this will eventually settle down and HTML-based 
searching will be
possible again.


[previous summary, updated:]
I've been working on a Python-based tool which people on this list might
find useful.  It's basically 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 Data Release 5 (DR5) from 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 program won't *get* the data for you, of course, 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 (France):  Found object coordinates: RA = 21 07 01.59, 
Dec = +42 14 10.2

Searching archives for ngc 7027 (RA = 21 07 01.593, dec = +42 14 10.18),
with search box =  2.0 arcmin...
         ING Archive: No data found.
         Sloan Digital Sky Survey (DR5) 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! 
("699 frames are found.")
                 349 images and 350 spectra
                 Subaru -- OHS/CISCO (9), Subaru -- IRCS (5), Subaru 
-- COMICS (331), Kiso -- 1k CCD (3),
                 Kiso -- 2k CCD (1), 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