[AstroPy] Updated telarchive (v1.5) + fetchsdss

[Peter Erwin]

Hi,

This is an announcement of an updated version (1.5) 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 DR7 of SDSS.

- Various fixes to restore or improve counting of instruments from ESO  
and
Subaru archives.

- Updated to count XMM-Optical Monitor refereences at MAST archive and
new automated telescope data at Subaru (SMOKA) archive.

- More flexible command-line parsing (now requires Python 2.3 or  
higher).

- fetchsdss overhauled to deal with DR7 interface changes: now  
retrieves and save
individual FITS files and/or JPEG files instead of archive- 
generated .tar.gz file;
more command-line options (e.g. specify size of JPEG images).


[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 7 (DR7) 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...
	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)


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