DOKK / manpages / debian 12 / stilts / stilts-cone.1.en
STILTS-CONE(1) Stilts commands STILTS-CONE(1)

stilts-cone - Executes a Cone Search-like query

stilts cone [serviceurl=<url-value>] [lon=<degrees>] [lat=<degrees>] [radius=<degrees>] [skysys=icrs|fk5|fk4|galactic|supergalactic|ecliptic] [servicetype=cone|ssa|sia1|sia2|sia] [verb=1|2|3] [compress=true|false] [dataformat=<value>] [ocmd=<cmds>] [omode=out|meta|stats|count|checksum|cgi|discard|topcat|samp|tosql|gui] [out=<out-table>] [ofmt=<out-format>]

cone is a utility to execute one of the "Simple" positional DAL query operations on a remote server: Simple Cone Search, Simple Image Access (SIA) or Simple Spectral Access (SSA). The job it does is not very complicated: given a base URL for a service of one of these types and values for the central position and radius required, it assembles the query URL in the form required for the relevant protocol, retrieves the result of the query, and turns it into a table which can be operated on with the usual STILTS pipeline operations.

The base part of a URL which defines the query to be made. Additional parameters will be appended to this using CGI syntax ("name=value", separated by '&' characters). If this value does not end in either a '?' or a '&', one will be added as appropriate.

Central longitude position for cone search. By default this is the Right Ascension, but depending on the value of the skysys parameter it may be in a different sky system.

Central latitude position for cone search. By default this is the Declination, but depending on the value of the skysys parameter it may be in a different sky system.

Search radius in degrees.

Sky coordinate system used to interpret the lon and lat parameters. If the value is ICRS (the default) the provided values are assumed to be Right Ascension and Declination and are sent unchanged; for other values they will be converted from the named system into RA and Dec first.

Selects the type of data access service to contact. Most commonly this will be the Cone Search service itself, but there are one or two other possibilities:

  • cone: Cone Search protocol - returns a table of objects found near each location. See Cone Search standard.
  • ssa: Simple Spectral Access protocol - returns a table of spectra near each location. See SSA standard.
  • sia1: Simple Image Access protocol version 1 - returns a table of images near each location. See SIA 1.0 standard.
  • sia2: Simple Image Access protocol version 2 - returns a table of images near each location. See SIA 2.0 standard.
  • sia: alias for sia1

Verbosity level of the tables returned by the query service. A value of 1 indicates the bare minimum and 3 indicates all available information.

If true, the service is requested to provide HTTP-level compression for the response stream (Accept-Encoding header is set to "gzip", see RFC 2616). This does not guarantee that compression will happen but if the service honours this request it may result in a smaller amount of network traffic at the expense of more processing on the server and client.

Indicates the format of data objects described in the returned table. The meaning of this is dependent on the value of the servicetype parameter:

  • servicetype=cone: not used
  • servicetype=ssa: gives the MIME type of spectra referenced in the output table, also special values "votable", "fits", "compliant", "graphic", "all", and others (value of the SSA FORMAT parameter).
  • servicetype=sia1: gives the MIME type required for images/resources referenced in the output table, corresponding to the SIA FORMAT parameter. The special values "GRAPHIC" (all graphics formats) and "ALL" (no restriction) as defined by SIAv1 are also permissible. For SIA version 1 only, this defaults to"image/fits".
  • servicetype=sia2: gives the MIME type required for images/resources referenced in the output table, corresponding to the SIA FORMAT parameter. The special values "GRAPHIC" (all graphics formats) and "ALL" (no restriction) as defined by SIAv1 are also permissible.
  • servicetype=sia: gives the MIME type required for images/resources referenced in the output table, corresponding to the SIA FORMAT parameter. The special values "GRAPHIC" (all graphics formats) and "ALL" (no restriction) as defined by SIAv1 are also permissible. For SIA version 1 only, this defaults to"image/fits".

Specifies processing to be performed on the output table, after all other processing has taken place. The value of this parameter is one or more of the filter commands described in SUN/256. If more than one is given, they must be separated by semicolon characters (";"). This parameter can be repeated multiple times on the same command line to build up a list of processing steps. The sequence of commands given in this way defines the processing pipeline which is performed on the table.

Commands may alteratively be supplied in an external file, by using the indirection character '@'. Thus a value of "@filename" causes the file filename to be read for a list of filter commands to execute. The commands in the file may be separated by newline characters and/or semicolons, and lines which are blank or which start with a '#' character are ignored.

The mode in which the result table will be output. The default mode is out, which means that the result will be written as a new table to disk or elsewhere, as determined by the out and ofmt parameters. However, there are other possibilities, which correspond to uses to which a table can be put other than outputting it, such as displaying metadata, calculating statistics, or populating a table in an SQL database. For some values of this parameter, additional parameters (<mode-args>) are required to determine the exact behaviour.

Possible values are

  • out
  • meta
  • stats
  • count
  • checksum
  • cgi
  • discard
  • topcat
  • samp
  • tosql
  • gui

Use the help=omode flag or see SUN/256 for more information.

The location of the output table. This is usually a filename to write to. If it is equal to the special value "-" (the default) the output table will be written to standard output.

This parameter must only be given if omode has its default value of "out".

Specifies the format in which the output table will be written (one of the ones in SUN/256 - matching is case-insensitive and you can use just the first few letters). If it has the special value "(auto)" (the default), then the output filename will be examined to try to guess what sort of file is required usually by looking at the extension. If it's not obvious from the filename what output format is intended, an error will result.

This parameter must only be given if omode has its default value of "out".

stilts(1)

If the package stilts-doc is installed, the full documentation SUN/256 is available in HTML format:
file:///usr/share/doc/stilts/sun256/index.html

STILTS version 3.4.7-debian

This is the Debian version of Stilts, which lack the support of some file formats and network protocols. For differences see
file:///usr/share/doc/stilts/README.Debian

Mark Taylor (Bristol University)

Mar 2017