Archive Help Page

Query Tips

  • Object name: This is the name of the object (or part of) as recorded in the header of the FITS files.
  • Object coordinates: Coordinates in sexagesimal format, J2000 e.g. 01:30:10.73 +30:15:40.0
  • Search box: Radius in arcmin around the search position.
  • Night of observation: Night when the data were obtained (YYYYMMDD). A range of nights can be queried using '..' to separate the nights as 20140201 .. 20140205.
  • Telescope: Leave blank to query all telescopes or select one.
  • Instrument: Name or part of the name of the instrument.
  • Filter: Waveband of observation. In the case of a spectroscopic instrument the name of the grating.
  • Project ID: Id of the project.
  • Run number: Run number or range of run numbers. A range of run numbers can be queried using '..' e.g. 1677878 .. 1677908

Downloading data

The data are all copied to a directory and made available from a non protected URL. In order to download the data you can use several commands. Two of the most popular are lftp and wget.

With lftp the command to run would be:

 lftp  -e "mirror .; quit" http://casu.ast.cam.ac.uk/~eglez/casuadc/requests/002212

Using wget:

wget -r -l1 -A "*.fit*" -nH --cut-dirs=4 -e robots=off http://casu.ast.cam.ac.uk/~eglez/casuadc/requests/002212 -P download_dir

Data format

Data are delivered in FITS files. For instruments with several CCDs all of them are included in the same FITS as multiple extensions, with exception of very old data when the extensions were written as different files.

Please note that all fits files are delivered as RICE compressed fits. Most of the software treat them in a transparent form for the user with the notable exception of IRAF. In order to transform the RICE compressed fits into uncompressed fits please use the tools at http://heasarc.nasa.gov/fitsio/fpack/. In order to uncompress a file use:

funpack image.fits.fz