SDSS DAS Coordinate List Submission Form

Provide your list of coordinates as tab or comma separated value (CSV) lists. Each line must specify one set of coordinates. The first coordinate must be the right ascension in decimal degrees, and the second must be the declination, also in decimal degrees. You may include comments by starting a line with a # character. This form will only accept tables of less that 10000 lines. In practice, the CAS performs coordinate searches much more efficiently, so we recommend that if you have a list of more than a few hundred sets of coordinates that you submit the list to the CAS cross-id form instead.

Alternatives

Note that for many queries, you will be better off using one of several CAS utilities to match your coordinates to imaging fields. Outlines of several of these, in increasing order of complexity (and versatility), follow. All of these will generate a CSV file that can be uploaded into the DAS using the post fields form.

The CAS Imaging Query Service (IQS) Form

From the CAS Imaging Query Service (IQS) Form, select the minimal outputs, and upload your list of coordinates in the "Proximity" part of the "Position constraints" section. Note that this will return the fields corresponding to matching objects in the SDSS catalog, and so is only guaranteed to be correct for coordinates for which there are matching objects in the SDSS catalog.

The CAS Cross-ID form

The SDSS Catalog Archive Server cross-id form also finds fields in which matching SDSS objects can be found, but is more versatile in what it can return. For example, it can return the URLs of some DAS files directly, eliminating the need for uploading lists to the DAS at all. For example:

SELECT 
   p.objID, p.ra, p.dec, 
   p.run, p.rerun, p.camcol, p.field, dbo.fGetUrlFitsBin(p.fieldid,'g')
FROM #x x, #upload u, PhotoTag p
WHERE u.up_id = x.up_id and x.objID=p.objID 
ORDER BY x.up_id

A General CAS SQL Query

The most versatile approach is to use the general SQL tools in the CAS or casjobs to generate tables useful to the DAS. This approach allows you to return fields corresponding to coordinates that do not have matches in the SDSS catalog. For example:

SELECT DISTINCT f.run, f.rerun, f.camcol, f.field
FROM specObjAll AS s
CROSS APPLY dbo.fGetNearbyFrameEq(s.ra,s.dec,23.4,0) AS nf
CROSS APPLY dbo.fCoordsFromEq(s.ra,s.dec) AS p
JOIN field AS f ON f.fieldID = nf.fieldID
WHERE 
   ((p.mu*f.e_r-f.b_r*p.nu-f.e_r*f.a_r+f.b_r*f.d_r)/(f.c_r*f.e_r-f.b_r*f.f_r))
     BETWEEN 0 AND 2048
 AND
   ((p.mu*f.f_r-f.c_r*p.nu-f.a_r*f.f_r+f.c_r*f.d_r)/(f.b_r*f.f_r-f.c_r*f.e_r))
     BETWEEN 0 AND 1489
 AND s.z > 3.5 AND s.zConf > 0.95

The 23.4 in line 3 is the distance from the center of a field to a corner, in arcminutes. The long messy equations calculate the row and column pixel coordinates in the field. The last line actually selects the scientifically interesting entries, in this case high redshift objects.

Like the cross-id form, this approach allows you to go directly to the URLs of the files you want by replacing the run, rerun, etc. in the "SELECT" above with calls to the fGetUrl* functions provided by the CAS.