APPLAUSE
Archives of Photographic PLates for Astronomical USE

Cone Search API

Apart form TAP, APPLAUSE also supports a simple cone search API for the applause_dr4.source_calib table. The URL for this API is

https://www.plate-archive.org/conesearch/api/source_calib/

The cone search API expects the following parameters:

  • right ascension in degrees: RA [0,360]
  • declination in degrees: DEC [-90,90]
  • search radius in degrees: SR [0, 1]
  • verbosity: VERB {1,2,3} (optional)
    • VERB=1: just 3 columns (ID,RA,DEC)
    • VERB=2: (from provider) preselected columns
    • VERB=3: all table columns

The parameters are added to the URL in the following way, e.g.:

https://www.plate-archive.org/conesearch/api/source_calib/?VERB=1&RA=245.89675&DEC=-26.52575&SR=0.1

CAVEAT: since the catalog has many entries, using a search radius SR > 0.25 can easily crash your browser.

The simplest way is using your browser, typing the URL:

https://www.plate-archive.org/conesearch/api/source_calib/?VERB=1&RA=22.3&DEC=22.3&SR=0.1

This returns a VOTABLE:

A snippet of the response of above query

The cone search API can be easily scripted using a HTTP client like wget, httpie or curl.