Munipack ‒ Cone Search

# Cone Search

Cone search of catalogues provided by Virtual Observatory.

## Command

    munipack cone [.. options ..] [--] RA DEC
    munipack cone [--list-catalogues | --list-servers]

## Description

Search a selected catalogue provided by Virtual observatory interface (VO-capable cone search) with following features:

- List of available catalogues is prepared.
- List of available servers is prepared.
- All parameters are in degrees.
- Output is stored to VOTable format (XML), FITS table or a plain text or any format supported by votable.

## Southern Declinations

Negative coordinates starts with minus sign which can be recognised, by the parsing routine, as an option or a switch. To prevent the confusion, we must separate options and parameters by double-dash [--]. Than recognition of the coordinates will work as expected.

A typical message when the problem is occurred:

    $ munipack cone 245.9 -26.5
    Unknown option '26'
    Usage: munipack cone ...

And can be easy solved as

    $ munipack cone -- 245.9 -26.5

## Catalogue Servers

Central Virtual Observatory catalogue site (VizieR) is maintained by Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg and provided as a VizieR service. The service is mirrored by other sites. The option `--service` offers possibility to select an appropriate mirror.

## Network Timeout

Sometimes connection can not be established on first attempt or a network connection is down, in this case, the connection will be repeated for a while.

## Input And Output

On input, no files are expected. Virtual Observatory is connected via network.

On output, results of the cone search are saved to a file.

## Selection Constrains

Some servers supports additional parameters for search, output form and etc. For instance, there is a way how to limit magnitudes in V filter for stars brighter than eleven:

    munipack cone --par 'Vmag=<11' -- 245.9 -26.5

Additional info can be found in VizieR query documentation.

## Parameters

`-c,--cat`
  catalogue alias (see --list-catalogues)
`-r`
  search radius in degrees (default: 0.1)
`-s`
  sort by the column
`--url`
  use the URL. Following options are ignored: -c, --cat, --par, -r, --server
`--id`
  Full catalogue identifier
`--par`
  additional optional parameters (by default maximum verbosity is used)
`--type`
  type of output file: fits,csv,txt,xml (default by suffix of `-o` option)
`--vocat`
  an alternative configuration file (normally, located in `[/opt]/usr/share/munipack/VOcat_conf.xml`)
`--server`
  use VizieR's mirror
`--list-catalogues`
  list of predefined catalogues
`--list-servers`
  list of available VizieR servers
`--`
  Double-dash separates options and switches from coordinates. One is necessary for negative coordinates (else parsing can be confused by minus representing of an option).

See Common options for input/output filenames.

## Using Another Catalogue

The list of available catalogues is limited. Another required catalogue can be added by this way:

- Go to VizieR service and discover your catalogue. We will need ID of the catalogue like "J/A+A/544/A31" (Ptolemaios catalogue).
- Invoke the cone as

      munipack cone --id 'J/A+A/544/A31' -r 1 -- 104 -16

- To use the data, apropriate parameters `--col-ra, --col-dec, --col-pm-ra, --col-pm-dec` for `astrometry, phcal,` etc must be specified.

## Examples

Search GSC catalogue within Pleiades (α = 92.4°, δ = 24.1°) with cone radius of 0.2°:

`$ munipack cone -c GSC -r 0.2 92.4 24.1`

Cone search for negative coordinates needs separate parameters and options with double-dash:

`$ munipack cone -c UCAC5 -r 0.2 -- 245.9 -26.5`

## See Also

Virtual Observatory, Common options, vizquery documentation.