Access TASS Mark IV data

Michael Richmond
Feb 18, 2007

You can access the TASS Mark IV dataset in several ways:

• Go to the Engineering Run Database site
  which will give you a bit of background on our data-use policy and provide you with several further choices.

• Grab all data within a box centered on a given position
  (you can reach this spot from the Engineering Run Database page, too)

• Make a phased light curve of a known variable star.
  This script uses SIMBAD to look up the period, epoch of max, and (optionally) position of the star. If it's not in SIMBAD's version of the General Catalog of Variable Stars (GCVS), then this script will fail.

• Download the ASCII photometry files produced by the pipeline
  (i.e. not organized in a database). This service provided by Doug Welch of McMaster University -- thanks, Doug!

• Go to the Mark IV "patches catalog" web page
  The format and contents of the catalog are described here. You can also grab the entire catalog if you wish, but beware -- it is about 490 MByte in size!

• Use the Vizier catalog query service of SIMBAD
  This permits very sophisticated searches into the Mark IV "patches" catalog. You might want to read a tutorial on using Aladin to access the Mark IV data .