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API and Command Line Access
The catalogs and astronomical archives of the HEASARC are accessible through different Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and Command Line Interfaces (CLI)
-
astroquery
The astroquery.heasarc queries the main archive and astroquery.skyview queries SkyView imaging.
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Virtual Observatory API
HEASARC data is accessible through the Virtual Observatory (VO) protocols, meaning common queries work at all VO-compatible archives.- For simple catalog searches, use Cone
- To locate imagine data, Simple Image Access (SIA)
- For spectra, Simple Spectral Access (SSA)
- For complex catalog searches, use Table Access Protocol (TAP)
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Custom APIs
The XAMIN catalog and archive interface allows users to query the HEASARC catalogs, plot the results and download the the associated data products. It includes both a web API and a Command Line interface.-
The command line interface runs like
runquery key1=value1 key2=value2 -
The corresponding web interface is:
https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/xamin/query?key1=value1&key2=value2
-
The command line interface runs like
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Command-line downloads
For downloading lots of data with a batch of requests from the command line, we provide a convenient Perl script to manage the downloads for you. We also have tips on using wget and curl in your own scripts.
About Astroquery at HEASARC
Warning:
The released version of astroquery.skyview
is currently broken.
(We had a DOS attack and had to block the protocol the last astroquery released
was incorrectly using.) The fix is to download and install the current but
not-yet-released version:
The HEASARC now supports access to the archive products through the
open source astroquery
package. There are two modules
that we now maintain: astroquery.heasarc
module
(version >= 0.4.8) and astroquery.skyview
.
Examples include the following code snippet that shows how to use
astroquery.heasarc
to locate and download data for a
specific source and a specific mission:
As you can see, some knowledge of the HEASARC structure helps, but there is also a lot in the module documentation.
Another example fetching imaging data from SkyView. This service uses full-sky or large survey data to generate custom images on the fly. An example of using it might look like:
See the astroquery documentation for astroquery.heasarc and astroquery.skyview for more details.