Astrobrowse Configuration File Request/Site Submission

This form is used to help create the configuration file used by Astrobrowse to access a remote service. It assumes that the remote service can be accessed through an HTML form available on the Web. NOTE: at this time, Astrobrowse can only emulate queries by coordinates. If a user inputs an object name, Simbad is called to obtain the coordinates before the query is made to each individual service. Astrobrowse may not work in systems where the actual coordinate-based query form is generated dynamically as the output from another CGI script.
Summary
There are three steps to this process. This page allows you to provide information about the service to be provided and where the form that invokes that service is located.

In the next step you will see a replica of your form where we have modified the Action attribute of the form to send its output to one of our CGI scripts. Just fill out the form as you would for a user query using the special keywords given below for the position and search size values. Then submit the request as if it were a request to your service.

After you submit the request, a CGI script here will analyze the results and present you with the resulting configuration file. Take a look at this form and if it seems reasonable to you, simply mail it to us at:

astrobrowse@athena.gsfc.nasa.gov

See below or click on field names for help filling out the form...

Service Name:
Institution:
Location:
Email:
Form URL:
Help URL:
Description of Service:
Bandpass:
 Resource class:
 Data available:
Distribution Domain:
Radius default (form's units):
Describing the Service
Astrobrowse works by emulating the user coming to a Web form, filling out a search request and submitting it. We need to know something about the service to help describe it to users and to tell the software how to query it. The purpose of each field is described below.
Service Name (Required)
This is intended to be a short name with which the user can identify the service being provided, e.g., HST WFPC Catalog. Typically this field will be used to label the service.
Institution
This should be a short version of the institution providing the service, e.g., SAO, HEASARC, ....
Location
This is the geographic location of the site. We recommend a format like Greenbelt MD (USA) or Cambridge (UK). It is intended to alert users to which sites might be easier or more difficult to reach over the Web.
Email
The email address of a person or group responsible for your service. This will be used by the Astrobrowse managers if there are problems integrating your service with ours, and may be made accessible to Astrobrowse users for reporting trouble with your form.
Form URL (Required)
This is the URL of the form to be emulated. E.g., http://legacy.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/W3Browse/w3nquery.pl
Help URL
This is a URL to which the user may wish to refer for detailed documentation about your site or this service. E.g., http://legacy.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/w3browse-help.html
Description of Service
The following section is currently not displayed to users, but should contain a longer description of your service. This area will be indexed; users can search for resources by keywords.
Bandpass
This selection box allows you to specify the general wavelength regions for which you have data. You may select as many as are appropriate.
Resource class
This selection box is used to indicate the kind of resource that is being queried. Derived is generally a catalog of characteristics of particular astronomical objects, derived from observations. The Observations category is used for observations by one or more instruments and often is used to index archival data. A survey is a set of observations generally taken without regard to pointing at specific objects. Astrobrowse queries of survey data may return images directly rather than lists of available images. More than one resource class can be selected but usually one should suffice.
Data available
This describes the kinds of data associated with the page that a user will get, not necessarily just the contents of the page itself. E.g., if the page being queried returned an list of Schmidt plates near a given position, then Images should be checked. Here Images is used to indicate the existence of spatially resolved data, Spectra indicates resolution in energy and Time-series resolution in time. More than one choice can be selected.
Distribution Domain:
Your information will be distributed to clients who subscribe to the following domains: SSDS (by default), SSDS.astronomy, SSDS.planetary, or SSDS.spacephysics. Select the domain(s) that your site should belong in.
Default radius
Astrobrowse does not require the user to specify a radius/box size for the search. If your form requires a radius but does not supply a default,, please enter one here. No translation of units or format is done on this field, so enter exactly what your form requests: eg if your form wants the radius in decimal degrees, and you decide the default should be 30 arcminutes, type 0.5. If it wants the radius in dd mm ss format, enter 00 30 00. Note that in the next form, when you fill in the radius use the special string appropriate to your form (e.g., if your form uses decimal degrees, put the string "$raddeg_f$" in the appropriate place).
Filling out the query form
After you submit the current form, Astrobrowse will go and retrieve the form you specified and will present it to you in a slightly modified version. You need to fill out the form as would expect a user to with the exception that you should use special strings in place of the position and search radius fields of the form. Please check that you use J2000 coordinates if the form allows a choice. Note that when Astrobrowse emulates filling in this form it will already have converted any target names into coordinates so that Astrobrowse will always search by coordinates, not by target name. The only exception to this is if the $name$ string is specified, and no coordinate strings. Do not specify both an object name and coordinates, this will confuse many database query scripts.

It's possible that a single Web page may contain several forms. Simply fill out the form that does a coordinate-based search and submit that one.

If the form allows querying of several different services depending upon the options chosen, then it is perfectly reasonable to create several configuration files. Using the browser Back button the user can edit the descriptions on the previous page and then choose different options on the form.

After the form is filled out as you would anticipate a user filling it, simply submit the form exactly as a user would, by clicking on your submit button.

Looking at the configuration file
When you submit this clone of your query form the output will be sent to another Astrobrowse script which will analyze the results to create a configuration file. The configuration file is displayed on your Web browser as a simple ASCII file. Much of it should be comprehensible to you and you may want to check it for misspellings and such. If you believe the file to be correct please mail it to us at the specified address and we will try to add it to our Astrobrowse node. If you are creating your own local Astrobrowse server, you can just save the configuration file and copy it to the appropriate location.
Special symbols used in Astrobrowse

Special symbols
symbolexampledescription
Combination formats:
$hmsdms$07 24 26.7 -22 13 19.9 RA and Dec in HH MM SS.f DD MM SS.f (J2000)
$hmsdms1950$ Same as above in epoch B1950.
Right Ascension formats:
$hms$07 24 26.7RA in HH MM SS.f format (J2000)
$hms1950 Same as above in epoch B1950.
$ra$111.1111The RA in decimal degrees (J2000)
$ra1950$ Same as above in epoch B1950.
$rahd$7.4074The RA in decimal hours (J2000)
$rahd1950$ Same as above in epoch B1950.
$rah$, $ram$, $ras$ or $rasd$ 07, 24, 26, 26.7The components of the sexigesimal RA (J2000) ($rasd$ has decimal fractions of a second)
$rah1950$, $ram1950$, $ras1950$ or $rasd1950$   Same as above in epoch B1950.
Declination formats:
$dms$-22 13 19.9The Declination in DD MM SS.f format (J2000)
$dms1950 Same as above in epoch B1950.
$dec$-22.2222The Declination in decimal degrees (J2000)
$dec1950$ Same as above in epoch B1950.
$decd$, $decm$, $decs$ or $decsd$-22, 13, 19, 19.9The componenents of the sexigesimal Dec (J2000) ($decsd$ has decimal fractions of a second)
$decd1950$, $decm1950$, $decs1950$ or $decsd1950$  Same as above in epoch B1950.
Galactic coordinates formats:
$galL$ 236.3701the galactic longitude in decimal degrees.
$galB$-3.1074the galactic latitude in decimal degrees.
search radius formats:
$radius$33The radius (or box size) to search in integer arc-minutes
$radius_f$33.4The radius (or box size) to search in decimal arc-minutes
$raddeg$0The radius (or box size) to search in integer degrees
$raddeg_f$ 0.5559 The radius (or box size) to search in decimal degrees
$radsec$ 2001The radius (or box size) to search in integer arc-seconds
$radsec_f$2001.2 The radius (or box size) to search in decimal arc-seconds
$raddms$ 00 33 21 the radius (or box size) to search in DD MM SS format
$raddms_f$ 00 33 21.2 the radius (or box size) to search in DD MM SS.f format
Object Name formats:
(note, since the use of names is dependent on different name resolvers, it is best to use this data type only with forms that do not accept coordinates, only names)
$samename$Sco X-1The object name with no case changes
$name$sco x-1Same as above, but all in lowercase
$NAME$SCO X-1Same as above, but all in uppercase
$Name$Sco x-1Same as above, but first letter in uppercase, the rest in lowercase

Addition special symbols can be easily defined. Please let us know if you have any difficulties. All coordinates are J2000 (except where noted).