This is a Python command-line program for searching multiple public telescope archives. It takes the name of an astronomical object -- or a set of coordinates -- and checks the telescope archives to see if they have observations within a user-specified box centered on the object/coordinates.
It does not retrieve any of the data, or provide a detailed listing of the available data [but see fetchsdss below]; you need to visit the individual archive sites for that. Its main purpose is to make it easier to find out whether there are any publically available data out there for a given object, or for a given position on the sky. It can tell you how many observations meeting the search criteria are available at each archive; for most archives, a short summary of the types of observations (e.g., instruments used) is given.
An example (slightly reformatted):
$ 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...
Sloan Digital Sky Survey (DR7) Coordinate-Search Server: No data found.
UKIRT Archive: Data exists! (943 observations found)
ESO Archive: No data found.
ING Archive (old interface): Data exists! (577 observations found)
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)
NOAO Science Archive: No data found.
AAT Archive: No data found.
CFHT Archive: Data exists! (213 observations found)
BEAR (200), GECKO (4), AOBVIS (3), AOBIR (6)
Multimission Archive at STScI (MAST): No data found.
HST Archive (at ESO): Data exists! (89 observations found)
-- 11 WFPC2, 24 WF, 1 PC, 13 NICMOS, 3 FOC, 24 STIS, 13 FOS
Gemini Science Archive: Data exists! (246 observations found)
45 imaging, 156 long-slit, 45 IFU
NIRI (198), michelle (3), GMOS-N (45)
SMOKA (Subaru Mitaka Okayama Kiso Archive): Data exists! (1393 observations found)
676 images and 717 spectra
Subaru -- OHS/CISCO (9), Subaru -- IRCS (160), Subaru -- COMICS (504), Kiso -- 1k CCD (3),
Subaru -- OHS/CISCO (29), Subaru -- IRCS (203), Subaru -- COMICS (451), Okayama -- SNG (3),
Okayama -- HIDES (31)
More details and some sample outputs can be found in the README file.
Download: telarchive-1.5.1.tar.gz.
Archives currently searched:NOTE: The updated version of Isaac Newton Group (ING) archive is currently not
accessible with this script!
I don't know when or if this will change. Currently, this script still
searches the old version of the ING archive, which does not have
data more recent than about 2001.
The code for searching individual archives is (mostly) modular, which should make it easier for people familiar with Python to add searches for new or private archives, as long as they have interfaces and outputs reasonably similar in format to the existing archives.
Included in the telarchive distribution is a separate program called "fetchsdss," which is specialized for retrieving FITS or JPEG images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (Data Release 7). It uses some of the same underlying software as telarchive, and is automatically installed as part of the telarchive package. See the file README_fetchsdss.txt for more information.
If you're only interested in searching (and possibly retrieving data from) SDSS, then fetchsdss can also be installed as a smaller package by itself.Download: fetchsdss-1.0.1.tar.gz.
Telarchive and fetchsdss are open source software, released under the Gnu Public License.
If you have found either of these programs particularly useful in your research, acknowledgment would be appreciated, but is not required.
Last modified 6 May 2009.