Data Sources
September 20/21
Responsible: R. Peletier
Lecture outline
Databases in astronomy exist to allow us to do science both in a
more efficient way, but also to apply novel tools and techniques
to explore data. The lecture will first give some examples of
astronomical databases and how to access the data.
The lecture in pdf (lectures 5 and 6) can be found here
Links and literature
- The latest SDSS data
release is DR7. This site has general information about
the survey, background information about algorithms and links
to other sources of SDSS interfaces.
- The Catalogue Archive
Server (or CAS) is the main starting point for searching
the catalogs produced by the SDSS survey.
- The Casjobs
server is the main place to do searches in the SDSS
database. Creating an account is free and you should create
one for this course.
- To get the actual raw data you have to use the Data Archive Server
(DAS). Here you can directly interact with the directory tree
where the data are stored or you can provide lists of data you
want to get and it will then be provided for you for download.
- The Millennium
simulation is a numerical cosmological
simulation of the Universe. It was then combined with
two different semi-analytic models for galaxy
formation. This is all provided through a web
interface and searchable using SQL, although only a
limited amount of the simulation (more than enough for
our course!) is available without registration.
-
The The
Cornell Digital HI Archive has a SQL interface to
search their database of HI detections in galaxies.
-
The
Debris disk database contains much information about
debris disks but no SQL interface.
-
The 6
degree field galaxy redshift survey does contain a nice
search form for running SQL searches on their data.
-
The RAVE
survey is a radial velocity survey of up to 1,000,000
stars. It has a query interface for the public (follow the
link for Data access) but no SQL.
-
The GALEX mission
has a searchable archive using the same CasJobs technology as
the SDSS.
-
The HyperLEDA
database of galaxy properties. This contains an SQL
interface as well as various other methods of interaction with
the catalogue.