This page describes how to use the
FUSE Science Search form and
describes the individual fields in the form. For information about
FUSE and its data, see the FUSE homepage at
http://fuse.pha.jhu.edu/.
Use the FUSE Science Search form
to locate and retrieve observations from the FUSE data archive at STScI.
Both public and proprietary data may be retrieved through this interface.
The FUSE Science Search form offers a view of FUSE observations,
which comprise one or more exposures.
To locate individual exposures, use the
FUSE Exposures Search page.
More information about retrieving FUSE data may be found on
the FUSE retrieval help page.
The name resolver you want to use, if you want to get an object's
coordinates. To resolve an object's name into its coordinates, enter
the object name in the Object Name field, select either
NED or
SIMBAD for the
resolver, and hit the Resolve button. The form will be redrawn
with the object's right ascension and declination entered as defaults
in the RA and Dec fields. Resolving an object name will
not change any other choices made in the form.
If you enter an object name and select either SIMBAD or NED, and then
hit the "Search" button, the script will get the coordinates before
doing the search. A message will appear at the top of the results page
showing you what coordinates were found for the object (or an error
message if the name resolver didn't work for some reason).
We recommend that you use object-name resolution to find observations
of fixed targets in the database. This is the most reliable way to
look up observations, because the observer could have given the
observation any name at all (for example, NGC1976 instead of
M42). However, if you do know the name that the observer gave
as the object, you can select FUSE Target Name. In that case, the
object name will not be resolved into coordinates, but will be used as
a search qualification in the database. (Remember when you do this to
not press the Resolve button.)
The SIMBAD and NED object name resolvers can only resolve the names of
fixed astronomical object; they cannot compute the positions of moving
objects (planets, comets, etc.).
The Right Ascension and Declination around which you want to search.
A number of formats are accepted for the RA and Dec. Here are some examples:
Decimal Degrees
185.63325 29.8959861111111
Hours, minutes and Seconds
12 22 31.98 29 53 45.55
12h22m31.98s 29d53m45.55s
12:22:31.98 +29:53:45.55
12h22'31.98" 29d53'45.55"
12h 22m 31.98s 29d 53m 45.55s
12h 22' 31.98" 29d 53' 45.55"
12h 22' 31.98" -29d 53' 45.55"
12h22'31".98 -29d53'45".55
12h22m31s.98 -29o53m45s.55
12h 22' 31".98 -29d 53' 45".55
Hours/Degrees and Minutes (no seconds)
12 22 29 53
12h22m +29d53m
12h22m 29d53m
12:22m 29:53m
12h22' 29d53'
12h 22m 29d 53m
12h 22' 29d 53'
12h 22' -29d 53'
The RA may be given in decimal degrees by indicating
a D or d after the degrees:
12d 22m 29d 53m
Spacing is not important, as long as the value is unambiguous, and that
you can delimit the hours/degrees, minutes, and (optional) seconds with
letters, colons, spaces, or any character that's not a digit or a
decimal point.
Note also that seconds of the form 31".98 or 31s.98 are accepted. This
should make it easy to cut and paste values into these fields from
electronic publications.
How far around the search position you would like to search, in
arcminutes. You can specify either a single number or a range. A single
number means "all observations whose positions are less than this many
arcminutes from the given position". A range can be given to get
observations within a torus around a position; for example, "5 .. 20"
will find observations between 5 and 20 arcminutes from the search
position.
The date of the observation. More specifically, the date and time,
in GMT, on which the exposure was started. When specifying this
date, you need to include a date and an optional time. The date
can have any of the following formats (the month name can be
spelled out or abbreviated to three letters; case is not
significant):
If the day is omitted, the first day of the month is assumed. This
means that a specification like "July 1994" will look for
observations done on July 1 1994 00:00:00, not for
observations done during July 1994. Note also that when entering a
date with the month in numerical format, the American ordeing is
used; i.e., the first number is the month.
If a time is omitted, then midnight (00:00:00) is assumed.
Otherwise, you can specify a time in any of these formats:
14:30
14:30:20
14:30:20:999
14:30:20.9
4am
4 PM
04:30:20 AM
To search for observations before a given date, use <, and for
observations after a given date, use >. For example,
> Jul 15 1994
< Jul 15 1994
You can use the .. operator to search on a range of dates:
Jul 1 1994 .. Aug 1 1995
This operator is inclusive on the first date and exclusive on the
second.
Finally, you can search on a list of dates or date ranges. For
example,
Jul 1 1994 .. Jul 3 1994, Dec 1 1995 .. Dec 6 1995
will search for observations done within either one of these date
ranges.
Name of an individual exposure within an observation set, e.g. A1260206001, A1260206002, A1260206003 .
Note that the first 8 characters are the same as the Observation Name.
When you are looking at the FUSE Observation form the Data ID is the Observation Name. Within the
exposure form the Data ID is the name of the exposure.
To find all FUSE exposures for a target, use the FUSE Observations ID plus a wild card: A1260206*
Select the release date for the data. See the observation date for
the entry format. FUSE data has a nominal proprietary period of one
year (though in special cases, this may be shortened or extended). The
Release Date field gives the end of the dataset's proprietary period.
When the results of a search query are displayed, both public and
proprietary datasets will have mark buttons. Proprietary datasets will
have an at symbol, @, next to the mark button, and on most browsers,
the background for proprietary mark buttons will be yellow. Properly
authorized users will be able to retrieve proprietary data through the
Web interface.
The Data ID name in the FUSE Exposure search is the unique identifier for a FUSE
exposure. The first 8 characters are the same as the first 8 characters of the FUSE
Observation ID of which this exposure is a member.
You may now search on any column in the mission database. Select the field
you wish to search on and type in the qualification.
More information about fields and valid values are provided in the
quickcol.html page .
NOTE that if you choose a
field in BOTH the form and in the User Option field, then you may not get
results or the result you expect.
You may choose the columns to be displayed in the output.
A set of columns that are commonly requested has been chosen as a default.
The default set of columns is:
Mark
Data ID
Target Name
RA (J2000)
Dec (J2000)
Aperture
Ref
Start Time
Exp Time
Program ID
Archive Date
Release Date
Cent Wavelength
ang sep (')
You remove output columns by highlighting the column to be removed and then clicking on
the remove button to the right of the list of chosen output columns.
You may determine the order of column placement by highlighting a column and then clicking
on the up or down buttons to the right of the list of chosen output columns.
You may add a column to the list of chosen columns. Select the desired column on the pull down
menu beneath the list of chosen output columns. Then click on the add button. The column will
be added to the bottom of the output column list.
Choose how you want the output rows sorted. You can select up to
three fields to sort on. the rows will be sorted in the order of the
first sort field; if two rows have the same sort field, they will be
sorted in order of the second sort field, and so on.
For each field, you can select that the rows be sorted in
reverse order on that field by selecting the reverse
checkbox. For example, you can sort the rows with the most recent
observations first by selecting Observation Date for the first
sort field and selecting the reverse checkbox next to it.
Some queries will be capable of returning thousands of rows or
more. Such large search results tend to use up memory on both the
client and server sides, and aren't usually useful. By default, we
limit the number of rows displayed to 100 rows, but you can increase
(or decrease) this limit as needed.
Select this checkbox if you want to see the SQL query that the FUSE
Search engine constructs from your query qualifications. The query
will be shown at the end of the search results.
SQL (Standard Query Language, pronounced either "ess cue ell" or
"sequel") is a language used by most relational database systems for
retrieving information from database tables. The FUSE Search Page
takes your search specifications and converts them to an SQL query to
run on our database. Viewing the generated query is often useful for
debugging, and may also be useful for SQL-literate users who want to
see what logic was used in the query. (In fact, this may be useful for
most people, since SQL is pretty easy to understand.)
If you have problems retrieving your data, you can contact the help
desk via the link at the bottom of this page.