Searching for Sources

Select the VLA source catalog. Source names follow IAU naming convention and aliases can be found by hovering over aliases, or by viewing the source properties (through the editing icon \includegraphics[height=3mm]{psimg/source.png.ps}). To find source 3C286 may take a while, even if you know this source is J1331+3030 in the IAU convention. Entering 3C286 in the source search tool in the upper part of the left hand side column will search the selected source catalog for the source name. If the Search Aliases As Well tick-box is not ticked, the search will only be matching for the name entered in the catalog (for VLA these are IAU names, but in your personal catalog you could have named your source 3C286 or skippy, etc); it then will only find this source in the VLA source catalog if J1331+3030 is entered. Therefore the aliases tick-box is by default ticked, but because searching is done on partial strings you may want to remove the option if you otherwise expect many matches (e.g., if you are looking for your source matching on the string C and don't want all 3C-sources to appear).

Because the search is performed on a partial string, searching for "-" (a minus sign), for example in the VLA catalog, will return a (16 page) table with all VLA calibrators with negative Declination (J2000), plus some extra sources with a minus sign in the name if you left the Search Aliases tick box ticked. A search on 1331+ will return 3C286 (as J1331+3030). Searches are not case sensitive. Two wild-cards are allowed: ? and *. They have the usual meaning of a single arbitrary character and any number of arbitrary characters, respectively. However, they are only useful between two other characters in the search string, as the search on string is automatically performed as a search on *string* (and an empty search string thus returns the whole catalog).

A source may also be obtained using the External Search if it is unknown to any of the existing catalogs. This search will be performed on the names, including aliases, in the SIMBAD data base, using the same search and character rules.

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