Due to anticipated demand we have staged public WFC3 science images from programs: 11501, 11502, 11503, 11504, 11505, 11359, 11360, and 11563 please see this web page.

Kepler Target Search Help

Use the Kepler Target Search form to find targets that are listed in the Kepler Input Catalog (KIC) AND believed to be "on or near the detector". The interface will allow searches on roughly 6.5 million entries (~ half of the total in the KIC). Of these, about 4.41 million are "on" the detector for at least one season and 4.38 million are "always on" the detector. The remaining 2 million are considered "near" the detector.

Note about the KIC astrometry (RA, Dec, proper motion, parallax). The source of the astrometric quantities depends on which catalog (or catalogs) contain data for a given star. To ensure the highest accuracy and to minimize systematic errors, the hierarchy for the choice of astrometric values is as follows:

SCP (50 milliarcseconds but closer to Kepler epoch)
Hipparcos (10 milliarcseconds)
Tycho-2 for V brighter than 8.0 ( 20 milliarcseconds)
UCAC2 (40 milliarcseconds)
2MASS (70 milliarcseconds)
USNO-B1.0 (200 milliarcseconds)

The values listed in the KIC come from the first entry in this list that contains each star. The source catalog should be consulted for a detailed discussion of astrometric accuracy. The quantities listed here are global averages.

Also note that there are four sets of the module, output, channel, row, and column parameters, one set for each season. The season information is included in the name of the field (e.g. MODULE_SEASON_0, OUTPUT_SEASON_0, etc). Seasons run from 0 to 3, roughly corresponding to Summer through Spring (in the northern hemisphere), respectively. The table below maps MJD at the start of a given season to the season number:

MJD, SEASON
54908, 3
55000, 0
55091, 1
55182, 2
55274, 3
55370, 0
55462, 1
55552, 2
55644, 3
55739, 0
55833, 1
55924, 2
56015, 3
56106, 0
56201, 1
54818, 2
54908, 3
54998, 0
55091, 1
55182, 2
55274, 3
55370, 0
55462, 1
55552, 2
55644, 3
55739, 0
55833, 1
55924, 2
56015, 3
56106, 0
56201, 1

General Search Options and Operators

Search values can be specified in several different ways, depending on the data type of the field. In all cases, a single value can be entered (although this is not recommented for floating point values). In addition, various operators can be included depending on the data type of the field as described below.

Numerical fields - Real (i.e., float or double) and Integer (i.e., long) fields can be specified as a single value, or as a single value with numerical operators such as "< n", ">= n", and "!= n", or as an inclusive range (e.g., "1990 .. 2000"). Bcause of small differences in stored floating point values, specifying a single floating point value may not return the expected results. Therefore, numerical or range operators are recommended with floating point fields queries. Integers may be requested either way.
String fields - String fields, also known as "char" or "varchar" fields, can use the = or != operator (e.g., != SMALL). By default, string searches use the SQL "LIKE" command so wildcards (either "*" or "%") are also allowed (e.g., "Jup*"). Quotes are not necessary for string values.
Coordinate fields - generally you can specify a variety of formats using either decimal degrees or sexagesimal values. These are described in detail below.
Date fields - Dates can also be specified in a variety of formats and can also use operators and inclusive range searches. These are described in more detail for the specific date fields but some examples include: "15 Jul 2005", "> Jul 15 1994", "Dec 1 1995 .. Dec 6 1995" or "2009-05-11 17:51:31". . Often queries on a single date will fail because the database can store datetime fields to the millisecond and the matches must be exact. It is preferable to use a range or the <, > operators.

To see the data type of a particular field, click on the form element label or any of the help page links. Note quotes are not needed for any values. In general, searches on "null" values are not possible.

By default, the various search criteria will be submitted using logical AND's. Logical OR's are not supported on most mission search forms. Information on individual search form elements is listed below. Note that specific examples given below do not necessarily apply to all missions. The examples are merely intended to show valid formats for data entry.

Warningfunction.include-once/archive/data1/docs/kepler/kepler_fov/help/search_help.content109

Warningfunction.include/archive/data1/docs/kepler/kepler_fov/help/search_help.content109

Kepler ID

A unique sequential integer ID assigned by Kepler project. Values run from 1 to over 13 million. Searches can be made for specific values (e.g., 12345678), ranges (e.g., 100 .. 150), or using < or > symbols (e.g., < 20).

Availability Flag

Source availability flag. Non-zero values indicate the target has been observed. A "1" means the target has been observed but is not restricted to Science Team members. A "2" means the target was observed by the Kepler Science Team (and therefore unavailable to GO proposer's). The Kepler Science Team has exclusive rights to all targets on the exoplanet survey list (as described in Policy 4 of the Science Utilization Policy; KKPO-16104).

Effective Temperature

Derived effective temperature. Currently values range from 3,105 to 19,336 K.

Log G

Estimated Log10 surface gravity. Currently values range from -0.43 to 6.16

Seasons Target on CCD

Choose the periods for which targets must be on the detector. The default ("any") implies the target(s) must be on the detector for at least one season. The other options include:

"all" (target must always be on the detector)
"season_0" (target is on the detector for at least season_0),
"season_1" (target is on the detector for at least season_1),
"season_2" (target is on the detector for at least season_2),
"season_3" (target is on the detector for at least season_3),
"unspecified" (target is on or near the detector), Note that of the total ~6.5 million entries, roughly 2 million are considered near, but never on, the detector. These entries are normally excluded from the search UNLESS the user selects the "unspecified" option.

Minimum Distance from Edge

Specify the minimum distance a target may be from the edge of the detector. For example, if you only want targets at least 50 pixels from the closest edge, enter 50. Range is 1 to 511. Note: do not use "<", ">", or other numerical operators for this form element.

Kepler Magnitude

Kepler Magnitude as specified in the Kepler Input Catalog. Current range: 2.98 to 24.99

2MASS ID

2MASS catalog ID. example: 19045085+3723043

User Specified Field n

You may use these form elements to search on any column(s) in the mission table. First, select the field you wish to search from the pulldown menu under the "User-specified field n" heading. Then, type in the qualification in the corresponding "Field Descriptions" box. Clicking on the "Field Descriptions" link, will display information on the allowed fields including the allowed range of values.

As an example, a Kepler user might select "E(B-V)" from the pulldown menu and enter "< 0.5" in the "Field Descriptions" box.

NOTE only fields which are not already included on the search form should be selected. Specifying search criteria for a field that is listed in BOTH the form and in the User Specified field, may cause either the query to fail or return unexpected results.

Output Columns

This form element allows you to choose the columns to be displayed and their order, for the search results. A set of columns that are commonly requested has been chosen as a default.

You remove output columns by highlighting the column to be removed and then clicking on the remove button to the right of the output columns list.

You may determine the order of columns by highlighting a column and then clicking the up or down buttons to the right of the list of chosen output columns.

You may also add more columns to the list, either singly or all at once. To add individual columns, select the desired column from the pull down menu beneath the list of chosen output columns, then click the add button. The column will be added to the bottom of the output column list. To add all the available columns, click the "add all" button.

Note the output column form element has its own reset button to restore the list of output columns to the values initially displayed when the page was drawn. The reset button at the top of the form is used to reset the other form elements. Clicking the "clear form" button will restore the original defaults to all isections of the form.

One warning, the amount of memory required for a search is proportional to the number of columns requested. For large requests, users may want to reduce the number of output columns to the minimum required.

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. Default sort fields may be listed, but any field from the pulldown list can be used. Specifying multiple sort fields may increase executon time. If you prefer no sorting, you can specify "null" for all 3 fields. This may speed up the query, but results will be displayed in the order in which they were originally stored in the database table.

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.

One word of caution: the selected sort field can change the search results when the query finds more rows than are displayed ( i.e, when the number of found rows exceeds the value of "maximum records"). For example, for a search on a particular coordinate that finds 5,000 entries, if the search is sorted on exposure time and 1,001 rows are to be displayed (the default), then the 1,001 shortest exposures from the 5,000 found entries will be displayed which may not include the entries closest to the desired position. (It is a good idea to always sort on "ang_sep" for target or coordinate searches).

Display Coordinates

Specifies the format for displaying the primary equatorial (i.e., RA and Dec) coordinates. The options include:

Sexagesimal - The default format with Right Ascension specified as hh mm ss.ss and Declination as +/-dd mm ss.s ( e.g., RA = 12 46 11.09, Dec = -00 30 12.0),
Degrees - Decimal degrees for both RA and Dec with 5 significant figures to the right of the decimal point (e.g., RA=191.54619, Dec=-0.50333), or
Hours - Decimal hours for RA and decimal degrees for Dec in same format as for decimal degrees (e.g., RA=12.76975, Dec=-0.50333). Note decimal hours = decimal degrees/15.0.

Any other coordinate fields contained in the searched mission catalog will be displayed in their original format.

Maximum Records

This value specifies the maximum number of rows returned in a single query. For the standard mission search forms, the current default is 1,001, but values from 1 to 15,001 are allowed. For the file upload forms in which multiple targets, data ID's, or coordinates can be specified, the default is set to 20 rows per file entry, with allowed values ranging from 1 to 500.

Note when displayed as HTML, the latest search scripts will display 50 records per page. Links to the additional pages are shown on the results page. This paging feature however does require javascript to be turned on.

When queries are submitted as a web service, the default number of rows returned is 2,000, but any value is allowed when max_rows is specified as a query parameter. (See the MAST Web services page for more information.)

Records per page

This parameter controls the number of records displayed per web page. By default, 50 rows or records are displayed per HTML page. Therefore if 200 records are returned, links to 4 pages will be displayed at the top and bottom of the results table. Selecting 100 would display 100 records and links to 2 pages. The paging feature however uses javascript, so if javascript is turned off, paging won't work and only the rows shown on the first page can be displayed. This is one reason why increasing the default value may be helpful. The current limit is 500 rows per page. Note this value is ignored when output formats other than HTML are selected.

Show SQL Query

Select this checkbox if you want to see the SQL query constructed from your query qualifications. The query will be shown above 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 search script 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.)

Make Rows Distinct

Selecting this checkbox will restrict the display to only rows in which every output column value for a given row is unique. This option is primarily useful when only a small number of columns are displayed (i.e., using the "remove" button to remove default output columns) and when the selected columns have duplicate values. Including columns which already have unique values (e.g. Kepler ID or Data ID) will make the "Distinct" option ineffective.

As an example, a IUE or FUSE user might want to create a list of unique target names for a specific object class/category. He or she would specify the desired object class, select only "object Class" and "target name" for the output columns, click the "Make Rows Distinct" button, then click "Search".

Note that for some missions, columns such as RA, Dec and Magnitude were frequently defined by the observer and often have different values for the same target. If columns such as these are chosen as output columns, there will often be more than one row listed per object name.

Output Format

You may choose any of the following formats for displaying/storing search results. If you are using a browser (e.g., Firefox, etc) to submit a query from a MAST web form, the formats labelled "File: ..." offer a way to download results directly to your local computer. Choose any of the other format options if you want to display the results in the browser, or if you are submitting the request from a program (see MAST web services).

HTML_Table (default) - results returned as a standard HTML table including various links for retrieving data, displaying previews, literature references, plotting spectra, etc.
File: Excel_Spreadsheet - results are stored as an Excel spreadsheet file. (Note: assumes users computer/browser provides support for Excel-format files). The default file name when downloaded is "mission"_search.xls where "mission" is the mission name (e.g., fuse_search.xls).
VOTable - an XML format adopted by the Virtual Observatory (VO) project and displayed in the user's browser. Note coordinates in VOTable format are always in decimal degrees rather than sexagesimal format. For searches returning results from more than one mission and/or target, multiple "resource" tags are created. Searches with a radius of 0 will return a VOTable file listing the output fields for that particular mission/catalog. (For more information on the XML file format, see VOTable documentation.)
Comma-separated values - a simple ASCII array containing column headings followed by rows of comma-separated values. In file upload mode, a blank line is inserted between the search results to separate multiple target queries.
Space-separated values - a simple ASCII array containing column headings followed by rows of space-separated values. In file upload mode, a blank line is inserted between the search results to separate multiple target queries. Note users may want to select coordinates in decimal rather than sexagesimal format to maintain the correspondence between column headings and entries although some column headings may contain blanks as well. (Semi-colons or commas are probably safer delimiters.)
Semi-colon separated values - a simple ASCII array containing column headings followed by rows of semi-colon separated values. In file upload mode, a blank line is inserted between the search results to separate multiple target queries.
File: comma-separated values - a simple ASCII text file containing column headings followed by rows of comma-separated values. In file upload mode, a blank line is inserted between the search results to separate multiple target queries. Rather than being displayed in the browser, the results are directly downloaded to the users computer using the file name "mission"_search.txt where "mission" is the mission name (e.g., hst_search.txt). Depending on the browser settings, the user may be prompted for a file location before the file is downloaded.
File: Space-separated values - a simple ASCII text file containing column headings followed by rows of space-separated values. In file upload mode, a blank line is inserted between the search results to separate multiple target queries. Rather than being displayed in the browser, the results are directly downloaded to the users computer using the file name "mission"_search.txt where "mission" is the mission name (e.g., hst_search.txt). Depending on the browser settings, the user may be prompted for a file location before the file is downloaded.
File: Semicolon-separated values - a simple ASCII text file containing column headings followed by rows of semicolon-separated values. In file upload mode, a blank line is inserted between the search results to separate multiple target queries. Rather than being displayed in the browser, the results are directly downloaded to the users computer using the file name "mission"_search.txt where "mission" is the mission name (e.g., hst_search.txt). Depending on the browser settings, the user may be prompted for a file location before the file is downloaded.

Note: If no entries are found for an entry a "no entries found" message is written in the selected format and the program continues. In all cases, error conditions will cause the database search to abort.