NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) Table Upload Example

• Get a list of objects from NED
• Format the list properly
  • Table example: NEDtable_koaready.txt
• Upload the table to KOA

Get a list of objects from NED

Target lists must adhere to the formatting rules required by KOA. From NED it is easy to generate tab-delimited list and this can be imported into KOA with minimal editing, so we will use that for this example. The table must include target name, RA, Dec. The following describes only one way of creating a viable table in NED and reformatting it so KOA will accept it, there are many possible routes to this end.

As an example, let's say you are interested in Xray sources near the center of IC 342.

• Go to NED http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/
• Under "Objects" click on "Near Name". This takes you to the "Search Near Objects" search page.
• Put "IC 342" in for object name and set the search radius for 15 arcminutes
• Page down to the section labeled "Selection by Object Type" and choose "Xray Sources (XrayS)" from "Unclassified Extragalactic Candidates" which is the lower left of the first set of 3 boxes of selections.
• Page further down to the section labeled "Output Format Specifications" and select "Text (ASCII) - Tab Separated Values of Main Source Table" Please note that while most NED search pages provide a choice of output format, a small number do not. In those few cases, it would be considerably more diffcult to create an easily reformatted table.
• Now click on the button "Near Name Search" to initiate the search. This will display the ASCII table results in your browser window, at the time this example was created, there were 46 results. Capture them by saving the page as a file. For this example, NEDtable.txt
• The original table looks like this: NEDtable.txt

Format the list properly

• Let's assume that one way or another you open this table within Excel. You should see some rows at the top with header information, and several column of which the first four are: a sequential integer (1-46, or however many objects were found), the object name, and RA and dec in decimal degrees.
• To convert this to a compatible format:
  • Remove the header lines, so that the file starts with the column labels
  • Delete the first column (the file will work in KOA with it, but the output results won't contain the object name).
  • Rename the current first 3 columns: "Object Name" becomes "object", "RA(deg)" becomes "ra" and "DEC(deg)" becomes "dec"
  • Save the file: For the example we used "NEDtable_koaready.txt"
  • This file looks like: NEDtable_koaready.txt

Upload the table to KOA

• From this point forward the procedure is the same as for any other multi-object table upload in KOA.
• Point your Web browser to the KOA user interface at https://koa.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/KOA/nph-KOAlogin and select the "More Search Options" tab.
• In the resulting page, under "3. Enter search criteria" you will see a radio button for "Multiple Object Table File". Select this and click the adjacent "Browse" button.
• In the resulting dialog box, navigate to and select your target list.
• Click the "Search" button on the KOA interface (towards the top or the bottom).
• If all has gone well, you will see a results table that lists each row of your table and whether there are any data on that target in KOA. In our case only two objects had data. We clicked on "See results" for the first one (row 1). The "See results" link will take you to the normal search return page of KOA.
• You can now select and download your files as you would if you had searched the archive for that specific object.