Astroquery is an Astropy-affiliated package that contains a collection of tools to access online Astronomical data. To install it, do:
pip install astroquery
The following modules have been completed using a common API:
astroquery.simbad
)astroquery.vizier
)astroquery.irsa_dust
)astroquery.ned
)astroquery.splatalogue
)astroquery.ibe
)astroquery.irsa
)astroquery.ukidss
)astroquery.magpis
)astroquery.nrao
)astroquery.besancon
)astroquery.nist
)astroquery.nvas
)astroquery.gama
)astroquery.eso
)astroquery.xmatch
)astroquery.atomic
)astroquery.alma
)astroquery.skyview
)astroquery.nasa_ads
)astroquery.heasarc
)astroquery.lcogt
)These others are functional, but do not follow a common & consistent API:
astroquery.fermi
)astroquery.sdss
)astroquery.alfalfa
)astroquery.sha
)astroquery.lamda
)astroquery.ogle
)astroquery.open_exoplanet_catalogue
)astroquery.cosmosim
)As an example, let's run a SIMBAD query:
from astropy import units as u
from astroquery.simbad import Simbad
r = Simbad.query_region('m42', radius=3. * u.arcmin)
r.colnames
r
In the following example we are looking for the SDSS photometry for a small subset of objects from the WTS survey and aim to have get a table that contains both the UKIRT JHK and SDSS griz values.
from astropy.table import Table, join
from astropy.coordinates import SkyCoord
from astroquery.sdss import SDSS
input_objects = Table.read('data/WTS_sources.txt', format='ascii')
input_objects
coords = SkyCoord(input_objects['RA'], input_objects['DEC'],
unit=u.rad)
photoobj_fields = ['ra', 'dec',
'psfMag_g', 'psfMagErr_g',
'psfMag_r', 'psfMagErr_r',
'psfMag_i', 'psfMagErr_i',
'psfMag_z', 'psfMagErr_z']
sdss_match = SDSS.query_crossid(coords, photoobj_fields=photoobj_fields,
obj_names=input_objects['obj_id'])
sdss_match
result = join(input_objects, sdss_match, keys='obj_id', join_type='left')
result
import matplotlib.pylab as plt
%matplotlib inline
plt.rc('figure', figsize=(10, 5))
plt.ylabel('J')
plt.xlabel('g-z')
plt.plot(result['psfMag_g']-result['psfMag_z'], result['J'], 'x')
Go to the documentation and try out a query interface for a service that might be relevant to you!