A command line tool to compare object classifications given by NED and SIMBAD in common regions. Objects are found in user provided searches: "cone search" or via region names ("M83").
Designed by Harryarts / Freepik
When astronomers work between NED (NASA extragalactic Database) and SIMBAD (Set of Identifications, Measurements, and Bibliography for Astronomical Data) it becomes noticeable that both systems use different classification schemes for objects. Although many of these objects are identical, they may be given different names or symbols between the two systems.
As can be imagined, this situation produces some confusion, and causes a researcher (or curious mind) to go through more work in order to sort out whether or not the two systems do or do not agree about a particular object, or set of objects, in a given region of the sky.
The goal of this project is 2 fold:
- Create a command line tool to automate some of this inter-database object comparison process.
- Attempt to quantify and infer overall similarity between the two systems: done through selective queries to the Messier object set.
Though there are portions of the project which do not yet conform perfectly to this standard. It has and is being used as the guiding style for the project. Progress will continue to be made to match the the PEP8 standard.
A few screenshots of the gdmines tool.
Help Screen - Provides overview of commands and options
Match Stats - Provides a summary of the match likeness of given query
example: m83 galaxy
Plot Results 1 - Graphical display of the objects in the sky, coloured by match status
example: m83 galaxy, radius = 1 arcmin
Plot Results 2 - Graphical display of the objects in the sky, coloured by match status
example: m83 galaxy, radius = 9 arcmin
Built with
- Query a region by name, M31 for example and get comparison results between NED and SIMBAD.
- Adjust parameters such as match-tolerance and obj-radius to fine tune your query.
- Do a cone search of a particular location for those who know exactly what they're looking for.
- View match statistics to get a better idea of the match breakdown.
- Show the match table for detailed match results for each object pair and their relationship.
- Display a 2D plot of overlapping objects in the sky, coloured by their computed match type.
- View the SIMBAD tree structure used to compare object classifications.
- Get a glossary of terms to define what each match type really means.
Will be coming to PyPI soon...
pip install galaxy_data_mines
For now, if you clone or download the repo, you can run the following command:
pip install /path/to/folder/galaxy_data_mines
There is a small test file tree_tester.py which tests the comparison_tree.py operations used to determine the relationships between NED and SIMBAD objects. This can be run by in the following way:
python3 tree_tester.py
Brief instructions coming soon...
For now try this:
gdmines --helpIf you feel intrigued by the project and would like to improve upon it, please feel free to fork it and submit a pull request. Thank you.
Thank you to my thesis advisor Pauline Barmby, who developed the original idea for this project, contributed some foundational elements to the codebase, and provided guidance. The project would not exist without her contributions.