mastcasjobs 0.0.8

An interface to MAST CasJobs.

This provides a simple interface to the MAST CasJobs server (home of GALEX, Kepler, the Hubble Source Catalog, PanSTARRS, etc.) using Dan Foreman-Mackey’s casjobs interface.

Installation

Install current versions of both the mastcasjobs and casjobs modules:

pip install mastcasjobs

If you want to do development on the mastcasjobs module, clone it and then install it using:

pip install .

Usage

Here is an example query that does a cone search for PS1 objects within 50 arc-sec of coordinates RA=187.706, Dec=12.391 (in degrees):

import mastcasjobs

query = """select o.objID, o.raMean, o.decMean,
o.nDetections, o.ng, o.nr, o.ni, o.nz, o.ny,
m.gMeanPSFMag, m.rMeanPSFMag, m.iMeanPSFMag, m.zMeanPSFMag, m.yMeanPSFMag
from fGetNearbyObjEq(187.706,12.391,50.0/60.0) nb
inner join ObjectThin o on o.objid=nb.objid and o.nDetections>1
inner join MeanObject m on o.objid=m.objid and o.uniquePspsOBid=m.uniquePspsOBid
"""

# user is your MAST Casjobs username
# pwd is your Casjobs password
# These can also come from the CASJOBS_USERID and CASJOBS_PW environment variables,
# in which case you do not need the username or password parameters.
# Create a Casjobs account at <https://mastweb.stsci.edu/ps1casjobs/CreateAccount.aspx>
#   if you do not already have one.

user = "myusername"
pwd = "My super secret password"

jobs = mastcasjobs.MastCasJobs(username=user, password=pwd, context="PanSTARRS_DR2")
results = jobs.quick(query, task_name="python cone search")
print(results)

Note that the results of the quick query are by default returned as an astropy table. You can add the optional parameter astropy=False to get a string instead.

The jobs object has other useful methods that allow you to do almost all the queries that you can run using the web interface. Use help(jobs.function) to get details. Some of the commonly used functions include:

Functions	Description
quick	Run short queries that execute in less than 1 minute.
submit	Submit a long-running query.
status, monitor, cancel	Monitor a submitted query.
fast_table	Fast retrieval of data from a MyDB table (works only on MAST Casjobs).
get_table	Retrieve a small or large MyDB table (slower but works in other Casjobs installations too).
list_tables	List tables in MyDB (or in another context).
drop_table_if_exists	Delete a table from your MyDB (if it exists).
upload_table	Upload a table to your MyDB database.

Requirements

This relies on the casjobs (version 0.0.2 or newer) and requests modules.

Since Python 2.7 is no longer supported, the installation of this version of the software requires Python 3.5 or greater. The software actually still runs in Python 2.7, but you will have to install it manually.

Release Notes

Release	Date	Description
0.0.8	Dec 4, 2025	Improve error messages for queries that get blocked on MAST server.
0.0.7	Nov 21, 2024	Use POST for queries by default, which avoids limits on the length of query strings.
0.0.6	Apr 24, 2024	Modified upload_table() method in MastCasJobs to allow an astropy.table as the data argument.
0.0.5	Jul 28, 2022	Initial pip-installable version.

License

MIT