5 The Functionality of catremote

The purpose of catremote is to query remote astronomical databases. It has a number of separate functions to realise this purpose, and each function corresponds to a mode of the program. The mode to be used is specified when catremote is run. The various modes are listed in Table 2 and described briefly below. Running catremote to invoke the various modes is described in detail in Section 6, below.

list

list all the databases which are currently available.

details

show details of a named database.

query

submit a query to a named database and retrieve the results. The basic type of query supported is the ‘cone search’ or ‘circular area search’ which returns all the objects found in a given circular area of sky. This area is specified by its central Right Ascension and Declination and angular radius. The objects returned are formatted as a catalogue and written to a local file.

name

submit a name of an astronomical object to a remote name-resolver database. If the name-resolver finds this name in its database then the Right Ascension and Declination of the object are returned and displayed.

help

list the modes available.