mastcasjobs 0.0.5

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:

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).

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.

License

MIT