This is a course on using the Virtual Observatory (VO), an
international research data infrastructure in Astronomy and
Astrophysics. Starting with a brief discussion of some general
concepts, it introduces some of the major client programs like TOPCAT
and Aladin, together with some simple discovery protocols. A first
focus topic is the query language ADQL, which is treated within the
equivalent of three lectures. The second major focus of the course is
the premier Python interface to the VO, pyVO, which is used to also
more deeply investigate the topics treated before. The course is
complemented by a number of side tracks, brief discussions of more
fundamental or more specialised VO topics.
The course comes with many exercises, most of which also have
solutions. We hope it is suitable for both self-study and as lecture
notes in teacher-led situations. In the latter case, it is designed to
work as a semester-long course with two hours of lectures and lab work
each per week.
United States Naval Observatory, Flagstaff Station
Description:
USNO-A2.0 is a catalog of 526,280,881 stars, and is based on a re-reduction of the Precision Measuring Machine (PMM) scans that were the basis for the USNO-A1.0 catalog. The major difference between A2.0 and A1.0 is that A1.0 used the Guide Star Catalog (Lasker et al. 1986, see Cat. <I/220>) as its reference frame whereas A2.0 uses the ICRF as realized by the USNO ACT catalog (Urban et al. 1997, see Cat. II/246>). A2.0 presents right ascension and declination (J2000, epoch of the mean of the blue and red plate) and the blue and red magnitude for each star. Usage of the ACT catalog as well as usage of new astrometric and photometric reduction algorithms should provide improved astrometry (mostly in the reduction of systematic errors) and improved photometry (because the brightest stars on each plate had B and V magnitudes measured by the Tycho experiment on the Hipparcos satellite). The basic format of the catalog and its compilation is the same as for A1.0, and most users should be able to migrate to this newer version with minimal effort. (1 data file).
United States Naval Observatory, Flagstaff Station
Description:
USNO-B is an all-sky catalog that presents positions, proper motions, magnitudes in various optical passbands, and star/galaxy estimators for 1,042,618,261 objects derived from 3,643,201,733 separate observations. The data were obtained from scans of 7435 Schmidt plates taken for the various sky surveys during the last 50 years. USNO-B1.0 is believed to provide all-sky coverage, completeness down to V=21, 0.2" astrometric accuracy at J2000, 0.3 mag photometric accuracy in up to five colors, and 85% accuracy for distinguishing stars from nonstellar objects. A brief discussion of various issues is given here, but the actual data are available from the US Naval Observatory Web site and others.
Venus Express Cleaned High-Resolution 128 Hz Magnetic Field Data
Collection
Short Name:
VEX-HIGH-MAG
Date:
15 Dec 2022 19:30:21
Publisher:
Planetary Data System
Description:
This collection contains Venus Express cleaned high-resolution (128
Hz) magnetic field data acquired by the fluxgate magnetometer
gradiometer onboard the Venus Express spacecraft. The data are
expressed in Venus Solar Orbital (VSO) coordinates and
Radial-East-North coordinates.
The ephemeris were produced by simulating the ejection of meteoroids
from the sunlit hemisphere of cometary nuclei, typically from 0 to 3
au, followed by the propagation of orbits of meteoroids in the Solar
System, taking into account the gravity of the Sun, the 8 planets,
Pluto, and the Moon, as well as the radiation pressure and the
Poynting-Robertson drag. Note that asteroid parent bodies were
considered as active (i.e. comet-like bodies) even if they are not
active today. The showers are predicted when a planet enters a large
enough set of meteoroids, at a distance less than typically 0.01 au.
See Vaubaillon J., Colas F., Jorda L. 2005 A new method to predict
meteor showers. I. Description of the model, Astronomy and
Astrophysics, Volume 439/2 p.751-760, as well as: Vaubaillon J. 2017 A
confidence index for forecasting of meteor showers, Planetary and
Space Science, Volume 143 p.78-82
VOTT is a formatted list of educational/outreach texts on using the
VO: use cases, tutorials, courses, and such. VOTT contains material
for all settings, from pre-school to graduate. It is generated from
the documents known to the VO Registry.
Voyager 1 Magnetometer Jupiter Resampled Heliographic (RTN) Coords
48.0 Second Data Collection
Short Name:
VG1_MAG_J_48S
Date:
15 Dec 2022 19:28:35
Publisher:
Planetary Data System
Description:
This collection contains calibrated magnetic field data acquired by
the Voyager 1 Low Field Magnetometer (LFM) during the Jupiter
encounter. Coverage begins in the solar wind inbound to Jupiter and
continues past the last outbound bowshock crossing. The data are in
Heliographic (RTN) coordinates and have been averaged from the 9.6
second summary data to a 48 second sample rate. All magnetic field
measurements are given in nanoTesla (nT).
![To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to GAVO's ADQL course. For details, see the `Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Public Domain dedication <http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/>`_. Of course, you should still give proper credit when using this data as required by good scientific practice. .. image:: /static/img/cc0.png :alt: [CC0]](/registry-search/?f%5BcontentLevel_facet%5D%5B%5D=Amateur&f%5Brights_facet%5D%5B%5D=To+the+extent+possible+under+law%2C+the+publisher+has+waived+all+copyright+and+related+or+neighboring+rights+to+GAVO%27s+ADQL+course.++For+details%2C+see+the+%60Creative+Commons+CC0+1.0+Public+Domain+dedication+%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fcreativecommons.org%2Fpublicdomain%2Fzero%2F1.0%2F%3E%60_.++Of+course%2C+you+should+still+give+proper+credit+when+using+this+data+as+required+by+good+scientific+practice.%0A%0A..+image%3A%3A+%2Fstatic%2Fimg%2Fcc0.png%0A+++%3Aalt%3A+%5BCC0%5D%0A%0A){kind=link}