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FUSE Science Search Help


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.


Target Name
The name of the astronomical object you want to search for.

Resolver
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.).

Resolve
When you press this button, the FUSE Science form will be redrawn with the coordinates of the object name entered into the RA and Dec fields.

RA,Dec
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.

Radius
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.

Equinox
The equinox of the RA and Dec you have entered, Currently on J2000 is available.


Observation-level Information

Obs. Start Time
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):
      Jul 15 1994
      Jul 1994 15
      15 Jul 1994
      1994 Jul 15
      1994 15 Jul
      7/15/1994
      7-15-1994
      7.15.1994
    
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.

Exposure Start Time
The date of the exposure. More specifically, the date and time, of the start of the exposure. See information about Observation Start Time for format options.

Category
The Category or Class assigned to the target by the PI.
FUSE uses the classification system developed for IUE.

Exp Time
The total exposure time of the observation, in seconds. You can use operators or ranges in this field; for example,
   < 100
   > 1000.0
   100 .. 1000
To exclude a range of exposures, use a comma:
  < 100, > 1000

Aperture
The aperture used. ( HIRS, LWRS, MDRS, RFPT)

Observer
The last name of the principal investigator of the observation.

Program
The FUSE proposal identifier under which the observation was executed. This can be an alphanumeric ID or a comma-separated list of alphaumeric IDs.

Archive Date
This is the date on which a dataset was archived.

Instrument Mode
instrument mode (TTAG or HIST)

Data ID
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*

Total Count Rate
Total count rate (counts/s)

FP Split
Number of FP split positions (On 10/2002 the choices are 0 or 4) This is a character field.

FES Filter
FES filter wheel position (CLR=Clear, COL=color, ND=Neutral Density, DEF=Clear)

FES Target Pos
Total Count Rates

Release date
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.

Data ID
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.

User Option
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.


Output Options

Output Columns
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.

Sort output by:
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.

Maximum number of hits
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.

Show SQL Query
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.

Display Options
You may choose one of three display options: HTML Form, a comma separated list, and Excel spreadsheet