CADC Observation Search

JCMT Science Archive Help: Forms

Form Summary

Most "fields" in the query form consist of three parts: a label, a check box, and a text box or selection box. First, enter any parameters in the appropriate text boxes or select desired options in the selection boxes. The more entries you make, the more restrictive is your search of the database. Make sure you do NOT select both an object name and a coordinate - choose one or the other.

To include a field in the results page from the submitted query, click on the check box beside that field. Several of these are selected by default. "Deselect" the check box if you do not want these items listed in the output.

After submitting your query, a table of planes is produced that contain the requested files (assuming the search was successful).

For planes containing product files, two kinds of previews may be available, a thumbnail image and a fits image/spectrum from which the thumbnail was derived. If the thumbnail is available it will be displayed in the row. Clicking on the thumbnail, or on the underlined link if the thumbnail is not available, will start a viewer for the FITS file. If a preview is not available "N/A" is displayed.

To retrieve particular data sets simply click on the "Mark" column of the desired observation(s) and click the "Proceed to Download" button. You can select every observation in the table by clicking the "MarkAll" button, and can de-select everything with the "UnMarkAll".

On the Results page, it is possible to see all the raw data taken on the same UT Date as a particular observation by clicking on the date in the "UT Date" column. This is a useful way to find associated calibration observations.

On the Search pages, click on a query parameter label for a description of each parameter.

Constraining a Query

Specifying your query constraints.
Specifying dates and range of dates.
Specifying the search box for coordinates.
Submitting your query

Specifying Query Constraints.

The query forms contain many entries like this:

Exp.Time....... :

The following operators are available to constrain the content of the fields:

<: Less than.
>: Greater than.
<=: Less than or equal to.
>=: Greater than or equal to.
..: A range of values (ex.: 234.56 .. 678.9 ).

For example, to select all exposures with exposure times greater than 500 seconds you would enter:

Exp.Time....... :

Some fields have a fixed set of possible values from which you can choose.
Front End...... :

If "Any" is selected from the above menu, then there is no constraint on this field.

Specifying dates and range of dates

Dates can be specified in several formats. The most convenent way is as a concatenated integer YYYYMMDD, so that 20090712 is 2009 July 12. Another accepted format is "Day Month Year", as in the example above. If a range is desired, two dates can be separated by two single dots (..). For example, to select all exposures that started between the 1st of January and the 5th of February 2009 you could enter :

UT Date.....:

The smaller (earlier) value must come first.

Specifying the search box for coordinates

It is not always useful to search directly by target names since there is no standard for naming astronomical targets and because observers sometimes enter less than descriptive names, like

"Enter off RA/DC and Vlsr of source"

"Galactic centre reference position"

We strongly suggest that users use the SIMBAD/NED resolver instead. Then any known astronomical name can be used with the name resolver providing the coordinates.

To specify the size of the search box around these coordinates a box size (DD:MM:SS) must be specified. The default box size is 10 arc minutes (00:10:00).

Submitting your query

At the top and at the bottom of the query form you will see a set of buttons like this :

In order to to submit your request press the "Search" button. If you want to reset all of the fields back to their original values simply press the "Reset" button.