.. -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

.. _CFHT_dataquery:

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CFHT_dataquery
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Software Description
====================

The Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC_) allows us to
retrieve public data from various telecopes and instruments via a WWW
interface and interactively via shell scripts and programs. Based on Peter
Erwin's `telarchive`_ Python scripts we wrote several
Python and bash shell scripts to comfortably retrieve imaging data
from the CFHT telescope via the UNIX command line.

The software provides you with scripts to perform the following tasks:

#. Obtain a list of images you want to retrieve from CADC, i.e. query
   the archive for available data on a given sky position, from a
   certain Principal Investigator etc.

#. Retrieve the data

#. Validate, Unpack and Compress retrieved data

Software Prerequisites
======================

To use the software your system needs to fulfil the following requirements:

* An internet connection
* `Python`_ in version 2.X with X>=5; currently the scripts are NOT Python 3.x compatible!
* The UNIX tools :command:`awk`, :command:`sort`, :command:`uniq`,
  :command:`cat` and :command:`wget`
* The `fitsverify`_
  program (developed within `FITSIO`_) to
  validate retrieved data
* To extract/uncompress retrieved images you also need the `imcopy`_
  tool (developed within `FITSIO`_)

Software Download
=================

Please find the latest version of the software `here`__

__ CFHT_dataquery_release_

Software Authors and Software License
=====================================

The software is maintained by Thomas Erben at the Argelander-Institut
für Astronomy in Bonn/Germany.  Please `email_me`_ with your
questions, suggestions and comments. CFHT_dataquery is released under the `GNU
General Public License, version 2`__.

Core parts of the software originate from Peter Erwins `telarchive`_ tool.

__ GPLv2_

.. include:: links.txt